The food revolution may have vamped up the UK's food offering but our customer service is still oceans apart from the United States, says Fay Maschler In 1917, a certain George M. Cohan wrote a song called Over There. The aim was to urge American...
Consumer demand for small food suppliers is high, but it takes organisation to manage the contracts Farmers markets in the UK are becoming more popular than ever before. Nearly 600 regular farmers markets across the country bring in a combined income...
Chris Bodker, founder of Image Restaurants, sells the group to D&D D&D London has bought Image Restaurants, which is made up of Kensington Place, The Avenue, Launceston Place and The Fish Shop, all in South West London, for a figure believed ...
New air-conditioning legislation designed to help reduce global warming comes into force this month A new piece of environmental legislation will come into force on July 4 which will affect all restaurants with air conditioning. The new F-gas ...
A brilliant dinner, good night's sleep and fantastic walk is ;all they do;, say the modest owners of Lakeland Gilpin Lodge The Cunliffes of Gilpin Lodge in Windermere call themselves hoteliers, not restaurateurs. From setting up their ...
Who are you? I am Charita Jones, known as Momma Cherri, originally from a town on the outskirts of Philadelphia, called Wayne, Pennsylvania. I came over to London in '78 as Stage Manager for a gospel musical. When the show closed I sang in a band...
QUARTER CHICKEN COMBO This is always on all three of our menus (in Soho, Clapham and Fulham). It's got spare ribs, smoked chicken (bone-in) and pulled pork so it gives people a chance to try three of the most popular things on the menu. The ribs...
Nobody wants to bar a customer, but if you feel there really isn't any choice, here are some ways of doing it right. Barring customers is an uncomfortable thing for most restaurateurs, and getting anyone to acknowledge that it happens is very ...
SEASIDE SPECIAL - Spiced Whitby Crab, Seaweed, Sesame and Sea Salt Crackers Obviously this uses local produce with the crab. We get the white meat then blitz the brown with spices, Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco, celery salt, chopped tomatoes and a ...
Fine dining Nottingham favourite picks up top prize again World Service in Nottingham has reclaimed the title of Nottingham Restaurant of the Year in the 2007 awards. The restaurant, in Nottingham's Lace Market, won the award in three consecutive...
After a trip to Malawi, Alex Renton ponders whether sub-Saharan food could really be the Next Big Thing I was just back from Malawi – an impoverished former British colony that's located, unhelpfully, between the even worseoff Zambia and ...
Alan Bacon, who is he? Partner, with Nick Hill, of the five-strong steak house company, Black & Blue, modelled on American steak houses but using British ingredients. Bacon and Hill also set up the Tootsies burger chain in 1973. They ran it until...
With his restaurant holding three Michelin stars and a listing in The S.Pellegrino World's 50 Best Restaurants, Sergio Herman of Oud Sluis in Holland is not just another chef. And Sergio is not just another cookery book. Think White Heat meets ...
The biggest single charge that a restaurateur has to pay is usually the rent, and with most leases specifying five yearly rent reviews (although there are some that have them every three or four years), it's worth getting to grips with how they ...
The spiel? ;It's a seasonal Italian influenced menu and we source quite a lot of products from Italy. Obviously our house speciality is ravioli with a choice of fillings and sauces all of which are served in a relaxed environment,; says ...
Peter Banks, who is he? Co-owner of Sutherland House, a modern British restaurant in Southwold, Suffolk which has the USP of including food miles alongside dishes on the menu. Banks and his wife Anna bought the property for £100,000 in ...
Novice restaurateur Sophie Murray, with less than a month to go before her first venture the East Beach Cafe opens, paces up and down, mobile phone clamped to her ear, doing some last minute, serious-sounding negotiations with a supplier. It's a...
Daniel Garratt, formerly of the Savoy Group in London, has bought The Brioche Restaurant in Totnes, South Devon, which he plans to open in the evenings as well as the customary lunchtimes. Garratt's wife Traci is from nearby Harbertonford. The ...
The Rosendale, Mark van der Goot's second gastropub after his critically-acclaimed The Greyhound in Battersea, The Rosendale in Dulwich, opening on July 1, will benefit from a huge outside space, seating 100 in the al fresco bar area, and a ...
Is it a bird, is it a plane? No, it's a bunch of people having dinner in mid-air. If you happen to be in north London on June 15 and you glance up to see a group of people tucking into a meal in the sky, don't worry, it's not because ...
Here's a teaser for you. Name the two biggest restaurants in London. Well, there's the Atrium, of course, and the Corinthian Club… What's that? Never heard of them? That could be because they lie outside the glittering heart of ...
A Georgian pub, opened in March this year, with an enormous 400sq.m walled garden, complete with a ‘barn', where the Sex Pistols and the Ramones once played. Interior and Exterior were designed by Shaun Clarkson (Odette's, The Club Bar ..
Kaiseki: The Exquisite Cuisine of Kyoto's Kikunoi Restaurant by Yoshihiro Murata Forewords by Ferran Adrià and Nobu Matsuhisa, £24.99, R.R.P, Kodansha International Review by Nic Watt The simplicity and purity of Japanese cuisine is ..
Here is a good scam for you restaurant owners keen to bolster your profits. Offer fresh mint tea and fresh ginger tea. Put a few leaves of the herb or a few slices of the root (don't bother peeling) into a teapot, add boiling water and charge ...
Restaurants are under increasing pressure to reduce levels of salt in food. Here's how to do it It is a widely acknowledged fact that much of the UK's population eats too much salt. Government guidelines recommend no more than 6g a day for ...
Confit Tuna with Crispy Melting Pork and Béarnaise Sauce The tuna is cooked in olive oil at about 50ºF (10ºC) so that it looks raw but is bursting with the flavour of the olive oil. It's on the healthy side but then there's ...
You know you're somewhere special if it has a great bathroom. Here's some practical tips on getting bums on seats with our guide to creating the perfect water closet Nothing hurts a chef's pride more than show-stopping lavs. ;The ...
Terry Durack of The Independent on Sunday Review picked up the Restaurant Critic's award at the Glenfiddich Food & Drink Awards 2007 at a ceremony held at Sketch in London's Mayfair. Judges, which included restaurateur Bruce Poole of Chez...
Of course we all want to keep the customer happy, but what about when they're just plain wrong? The customer is always right. Aren't they? What about if one goose-stepped up and down in front of a group of horrified German diners, shouting ...
Chef turnover is one of the biggest challenges facing the industry, generating massive annual costs, recruitment expert David McHattie suggests ways to tackle the £95m question When you last recruited a chef, the chances are it took you a while .
The spiel: ;Freshly prepared and flavoursome cheap Mexican food served at a fast-food pace and price but in a relaxed dining environment.; Which means? The customer chooses the fillings for their burrito from a counter of hot and cold ...
Long before the mantra of local, seasonal and organic was fashionable the recipient of this year's Lifetime Achievement Award was fighting the good fight. Restaurant paid her a visit… There's a chef I've heard about that's got ..
The first contact a potential guest makes with a restaurant is what will keep them coming back A casual enquiry about the price of the set lunch; a request for a copy of the menu; a reservation for two on a Saturday night. From surprisingly small ...
Moving house is stressful – especially if you're a goldfish heading out of the bowl and into the fryer Since reports of this Japanese-built contraption appeared so close to April 1, we had to make sure we could authenticate its existence ...
At one Barcelona restaurant they have come up with a high-tech solution to the age old problem of announcing the daily specials Nestled under the same roof as one of Barcelona's epic food markets and a stone's throw from the magnificent ...
Forty years after his father and uncle opened Le Gavroche, Chef/Patron Michel Roux Jr shares his feelings about the London stalwart You could set your clock by Le Gavroche celebrations. While other restaurants come and go as regularly as ever, you ...
Who is he? Co-owner of the Cantaloupe Group, which includes Cargo (Shoreditch), Market Place (W1) and The Big Chill brand. He is also co-owner of new Spanish restaurant and bar Camino, which will open in Kings Cross in May. How did he get into the ...
Another pub in Haworth and Bancroft's stable looks sure to stand out and deliver While much noise has been made about Gordon Ramsay's new pub opening in East London, across the country another pub serving decent food that doesn't want to...
A rise in expendable income means diners are likely to eat out more, but this is no time to sit back and relax It's never been more important for restaurateurs to get really good at marketing. Customers are more choosy about where they spend ...
The spiel? ;Healthy eating based on salads made from the freshest, unadulterated ingredients.; Which means? Starting at the base price of £5, customers can create their own salads out of about 80 different seasonal ingredients from ...
When a customer's big night out finally comes around, it's vital that service meets expectations You've been planning this meal for a long time, the reservations were made months ago. The food is excellent, the building is beautiful, but...
Restaurateurs are advised to pay attention to the latest amendments to the Work and Families Act With the introduction of the new Work and Families Act at the beginning of April, restaurateurs need to ensure they're up to speed with the changes ...
Waiting on tables is all about serving the customer, not a management brief, writes Fay Maschler The brief encounter that is the relationship between a waiter and a customer in a restaurant is fraught with the same difficulties that attended Celia ...
Silver service or pub grub? We ask those behind some of the most successful gastropubs how they strike the balance It's a familiar scenario. You knock back a couple of halves in the downstairs bar, ascend the rickety staircase to the dining room...
Crab Crème Brûlée ;The only thing that has been on the menu for the entire ten years we've been open is the Crab Crème Brulee. It's an adaptation of something I saw in a magazine ten years ago which called it ...
DANNY MEYER IS NEW YORK'S RESTAURATEUR EXTRAORDINAIRE AND THE US BUSINESS COMMUNITY IS CLAMOURING FOR HIS WORDS OF WISDOM. STILL HE FOUND TIME FOR RESTAURANT'S UNIQUE BRAND OF HOSPITALITY Five minutes into my first meeting with Danny Meyer I...
Who is he? Owner of the Meredith Group which runs gastropubs The House in Islington, The Bull in Highgate and is about to refurbish The Running Footman in Mayfair, which it will reopen in August. How did he get into the industry? He went to Swiss ...
After a High Court case making employers liable for staff harassment, there's a very real risk that robbery could hit you twice over if you don't take precautions Restaurateurs risk claims of negligence if they fail to protect their staff ...
Heat by Bill Buford Jonathan Cape £17.99 Review by Kayleigh Donahue Five years ago, Bill Buford, former Fiction Editor of The New Yorker, set out to write a profile on Mario Batali, famous in the US as much for his restaurant empire and ...
Who are you? An amateur chef who loves food and has just had the doors flung wide open for him. Ah yes, you won MasterChef, congratulations! You've been hard to get hold of – has fame gone to your head already? No, no. I've been in lots .
