The Caterer Blog

This week's Caterer includes an article looking at whether the hospitality industry can boast true ethnic diversity. The article has drawn an interesting emailed response from one reader, who points to numerous
"exemplars of success" - among them Cyrus Todiwala, 3663's Andy Kemp and Ken Hom. The correspondent's fear is that "such articles can create the impression that minorities have chips on their shoulders – great news for the bigots ... I think our industry, more than almost any other doesn’t see people in terms of race, colour or sex. What we see in people is passion commitment and ability."

Do you agree or disagree with this assessment? Has race ever been a factor in your career? Let us know your thoughts on diversity in the industry.

So Jamie O's latest TV program called "Jamie's Chef" aired on Channel four last night and you can't fault the man for his dedication to his Fifteen Foundation, which helps disadvantaged people to make better lives through cooking at his restaurant.

So with Jamie O back on the airwaves again, I was wondering how his popularity measured up against the other super celeb chef Gordon R
So here it is - the google fight and who wins? Use the Google fight link to find out or continue reading.

It is often said that this Labour government is undemocratic and ignores the view of the public.

So credit where credit's due for a new website, which allows members of the public to create their own online petitions calling on Tony Blair to take action. Inevitably, the most popular petitions surround taxes, car duty and fox hunting.

But, undoubtedly the best ones are the brainchilds of Tim Ireland and David Kitchen. And more than 5,000 Brits agree...

Take a look for yourself

With thanks to Football 365

It seems that the Web 2.0 world of blogging is catching on in hotels... well to a degree anyway. This posting from blogger Guillaume Thevenot on his Hotel Blogs site lists some blogs on the web that are hotel-related and their popularity by technorati links (use the previous embedded technorati link to explain what this is).

Driving home the other night, I listened to Jamie Oliver being interviewed on BBC Radio Four. Oh yes, I thought, plug for his new TV series, Jamie's Chef. And it was. But the ex-Pukka boy won me over with his honesty and refusal to dodge tricky questions. Call me naive to believe him but I think he does put his heart and soul into projects like the school dinners campaign and Fifteen.

The thing is, I think it's difficult to fake sincerity on a sustained basis in the media: it's very obvious when someone is trotting out well-rehearsed phrases just to look good (we've all seen chefs do that on TV) - the camera or microphone will always expose you in the end.

I was pretty sceptical about Bill Marriott - the boss of US hotel giant Marriott's blog expecting it to be filled with corporate nonsense. But having read it briefly, I actually think it's a bit better than that.

For one - he posts fairly regularly, and even though there is a fair bit of corporate whitewashing in it, it's the view of a chief exec and one that's pretty influential at that.. good on you Bill for joining the blogosphere... I wonder who'll be the first UK hotel boss to become a blogger?

So Amanda is leaving the Waldorf after five years, for what will no doubt be a well deserved break.

What a shame for Hilton - who must be ruing the day, given she's one of the few female gms - and a very high profile one at that - in London. She was surely a great advertisement for them and women in the industry.

Let us hope she sticks by her pledge to return to the sector after her break, or the industry will the poorer for it. How can this industry learn to get and then keep more women at the top?

It's amazing what you find in the Caterer archives. Take this for example, Hercules the bear who popped in for a pint at a Holiday Inn at Heathrow airport. It was sometime ago but no doubt someone will remember sitting next to him on the procedding flight, as there's nothing worse than a drunken bear stealing your complimentary peanuts. Perhaps with swathes of regulation hitting the pub industry, rising costs, licensing fees and continual clashes about drinking fuelling anti-social behaviour Hercules could be just the sought of strong, unflinching force the pub industry needs. British Bear & Pub Association anyone?

This post on Guillaume Thevenot's Hotels blog is really interesting - TripAdvisor is to allow its members to post short video clips on its site... wow doesn't this open up all sorts of problems for hoteliers??? I mean the camera never lies and all that. I'd love to hear your views on what TripAdvisor are doing....

According to the Scotsman, the carrot is set to be used in ways never conceived before thanks to a bizzare discovery by two Scottish scientists. They believe they have found a way to convert the vegetable into a material suitable for anything from fishing rods to warships.

Ah, what could be more Scottish than the great man himself Sean Connery, pictured here in his prime?

Yes, for many that master of accents and original Bond is Scottish hospitality personified. But wait, Caterer and Hotelkeeper next week (15 Feb) will be a Thistle-focused special highlighting the vibrancy, depth and excitement of the hospitality industry north of the border. Two pings and a pong, as the great man once said.

I'm not surprised that news that a hugely expensive Bankok banquet to inspire native chefs was causing a few Thais to choke on their...... well Pad Thai this weekend. The £15k a head
dinner was held on Saturday night at the rooftop Mezzaluna restaurant in the Lebua luxury hotel and was prepared by six three-Michelin star chefs from Italy, France and Germany.

The organisers of the event, which was called "Epicurean Masters of the World", said its purpose was to highlight Thailand as a suitable destination for the mega-rich, with profits going to charity, but why then fly in a bunch of foreign chefs to cook European dishes????... basically the event could have been held at any top class venue in the world as it had no bearing on the local cuisine!

Anyone who has sat straight-faced as a Liverpudlian guffaws at his own joke, watched a Yorkshireman happily get a round in, or met a Norfolk farmer with his own teeth, can vouch that regional stereotypes aren’t always accurate. And if you have visited Dublin in the last few years in order to soak up the legendary Irish hospitality, only to be blanked as you attempt to chat at the bar, you can console yourself that it wasn’t necessarily your stagnant odour. Every country goes through a honeymoon of tourism, when numbers are low and Americans a novelty, and a sad consensus of opinion is that southern Ireland left this period a few years back. Go to Dublin, they say in Belfast, and you won’t meet a Dubliner.

While Irish tourism boomed thirty years ago, when every ethnicity of American staked a claim to ancestry in the Emerald Isle, no one wanted to know about Northern Ireland. “Men with eyebrows on their cheeks, toothless simpletons, badly tarmaced drives, horses running round council estates, and men in platform shoes being arrested for bombings” was Alan Partridge’s summary of the country back in 1997.

But now, ten years after the Troubles ended, Northern Ireland tourism is booming. When Caterer sent me out there to report on it, I expected plastic versions of the Giants Causeway and delinquents in Guiness hats. But all i found out there was exceptional hospitality. Go and you won’t be disappointed. It’s like Prague 15 years ago or Dublin 30 years ago, when the population still cared and the barmen were local.

I came across this very interesting article written by a vegetarian who works for Caterer's parent Reed Business Information. She claims most top-end restaurants fail to cater for non-meat eaters. Have a read and let us know what you think.

Think of a stereotypical vegetarian… Weak? Pasty? Devoid of energy? Think again, writes senior market research executive Heather Macleod.

How times have changed at McDonalds reports Lindsay Campbell on the daily Wallstrip Web Video Show which mixes up stock news and pop culture in its quirky reports:

"Instead of getting third degree burns from cheap coffee in a drive-thru, I'm sipping lattes in a McCafe!"

Worth viewing if only to see the great skit on the old Big Mac jingle from back in the day (should get the old skool heads nodding)...two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun anyone? mmmm...

Von Essen’s £50m purchase of London’s heliport in Battersea probably didn’t raise too many eyebrows in the industry. It’s no big secret that they’re not short of a bob or two.

Aiming a snort at John Simpson’s “courageous” liberation of Kabul, I rolled up my sleeves and, in the interests of journalism, heroically accepted a trip on board one of a Von Essen helicopter to help celebrate their recent acquisition. Whizzing over London to Von Essen’s Cotswald-based Lower Slaughter Manor in 30 minutes it’s easy to see why the notion of easy helicopter travel might be attractive to city directors with money to spunk.

On meeting Andrew Davis, Von Essen’s chairman, it becomes apparent that money really isn’t a big issue. Bantering with the GM at Washbourne Court, the multi-millionaire pulled out a wodge of tenners thicker than a cow’s head and, in a manner reminiscent of an old man I met at the greyhounds, licked his finger before peeling off a tenner and handing it to his GM to “buy a pot of paint” (the joke flew over my head).

Coming from someone who’s day can be ruined when a pound gets sucked into the washing machine, I don’t think it would matter to him if the whole lot, plus a helicopter or two, got eaten by his Zanussi.

To have a head chef cook dinner in the comfort of your own home is something my wife Jackie has often dreamed about. Well, on the evening of February 14th (Valentine’s night) her dream became a reality.

It all began at a recent Springboard (a hospitality industry charity) event to celebrate Caterer's Best Places To Work awards, when I bid for and won the services of head chef, Christian D Hirons and his junior sous chef David Evans both from the Novotel in Coventry to visit my home and prepare a “Ready Steady Style” dinner.

So I read that the Times food critic and man with a razor sharp wit Giles Coren is to be the new face of Birds Eye - he won't be Cap'n Birds Eye and all grey hair and fluffy whiskers - but he will be endorsing a supplier of food products and one that uses cod, a fish that Coren quite rightly pleas for people to avoid to prevent the stock from being further depleted.

We are launching a new blog from our old colleague Dan Bignold, who now lives and works in Shanghai, so we wanted to find out what you think we should call it. Go to our online poll and cast your vote.

In today’s national newspapers one of the big chef stories is Marco Pierre White taking over ITV’s Hell’s Kitchen later this year, which Caterer already reported in October last year.

Back then Marco told us he was really looking forward to returning to the kitchen and said: "A little something tugs at me every week and I look forward to getting back in the ring.”

The issue of customers making off without payment is an ongoing problem and one that causes a great deal of angst and confusion.

I was contacted by a Caterer reader this week keen to publicise his case, after the police and the Crown Prosecution Service refused to proceed with his complaint against a customer who refused to pay for a meal for eight.

I read with interest the travel section of the Sunday Times yesterday and travel writer Matt Ruddis's description of his stay in Milan's Town House Galleria, which has applied for seven-star status from a hotel grading body in Switzerland.

It's not of course the first hotel to claim seven stars - the horribly over-the-top Burj Al Arab in Dubai and the Emirates Palace in Abu Dhabi - both claim seven stars. I remember having a drink in the Burj's rooftop bar last year and the waiter couldn't describe any of the wines served by the glass in the bar, beyond "a French Cabernet Sauvignon, a Merlot or a Shiraz".

Had a spit my coffee out moment - Nescafe? - earlier editing a news story for the web.

Nestlé chief executive and chairman, Peter Brabeck, has argued a ban on advertising confection to kids is unjust, as is his right.

Ofcom however feels what it is doing may help counter the nations' problem with obesity, especially amongst kids, but singling out confection as a main culprit is controversial, there's no doubt.

Still, where I take umbrage with Mr Braebeck - and this is a personal view - is the rather desparate swipe he has made to deflect attention from this central arguement by, bizarrely, attacking computer games as a legal entertainment that, quote, "lead to violence".

Acclaim Food has the gig this year for the never dull NME awards, which are to be held on Thursday at London's Hammersmith Palais.

The theme this year to tantalise the great and the good of the music world is band gear. Tying into this Acclaim will be feeding the 600-odd rock royalty with some rather natty tour-style flight case replicas, which you can see in all it's glory here:

On the menu for starters will be noodles and Thai crab with spiced chicken for the main. very nice.