The Caterer Blog

When chefs and nutritionists call for children to be taught about food at school, I now know what they mean.

Stephen Bulmer, former chef-director of the Raymond Blanc Cookery School at Le Manoir invited a couple of us journalist/mums down to his new academy, Brook Hall Cookery School in Winslow, Buckinghamshire, last week.

Well that hopefully got your attention. This monkey has very little to worry him other than finding a supply of good quality nuts but it's likely as a hospitality worker or business owner you have far more on your plate (unless you really do pay your staff peanuts).

We want to know what is worrying you and your views on a number of topics drawn from the themes that will be explored in Caterer and Hotelkeeper later this month when British Hospitality Association boss Bob Cotton joins us as guest editor.

Please take a few moments to share your thoughts and complete our Hospitality Industry Survey 2007.

Hospitality survey>>

Guest editor on foreign workers>>

John Bon Jovi is rarely right about anything but he got it spot on when he wrote the lyrics to his immortal classic "Young Guns". Forget the fact he was singing about a lost band of cowboys - he actually had Young Gun 2007 winners Samuel Johnson and Sally Adams in mind.

"I wake up in the morning
And I raise my weary head
I got an old coat for a pillow
And the earth was last nights bed"

The bed might not have been earth on the good ship Arcadia during this year's Catering and Hospitality Forum, but John gets pretty close to summing up the hangovers of recently graduated students, and boy did he ever get it right when he sang..

"I dont know where Im going
Only God knows where Ive been"....

Last week the great and the not-so good of the hospitality industry embarked on the P&O cruise ship Arcadia for three days of networking, conferences and heady boozing.

Congratulations and thanks must go out to Richmond Events for their smooth organisation of what must be a nightmare event to pull together. The three days and three nights onboard the Arcadia flew by and, certainly from the feed-back that was passed on to me, a lot of new contacts were made.

A few things stick in the memory - which may come as a suprise to majority of those consuming a dangerous amount of alcohol during the past week...

Independent Internet reviews are on course to make hotel and restaurant star ratings obsolete, according to new research among 5000 travellers by architects Woods Bagot.

Almost 58% of their respondents said they now resort to consumer reviews when looking for a steer on where to stay.

The research challenges the assumption that only web-savvy youngsters head online for hotel feedback. Over two-thirds of people aged between 35 and 54 reported being more inclined to check peer comments about accommodation on tripadvisor.co.uk and other sites.

Perhaps this can be explained by the fact that, the more you travel around the world, the more you appreciate the inconsistencies in regional ratings systems.

Of course, user-generated reviews bring problems of their own, with an emerging trend towards operators planting fake reviews for their own properties.

Had the pleasure of meeting William Baxter and Alastair Storey of contract caterer Baxter Storey yesterday.

They were great company and fellow petrol heads - what is it with contract caterers and motorsport? - so we got on well.

Business can't be all bad as they revealed that while their work cars were Audis they both also have Aston Martins. I could tell they were equally impressed by my 100,000 mile N Reg Punto.

Our dining spot was Scott's in London's Mayfair, part of Richard Caring's empire, which includes the Ivy and Caprice (restaurant not model).

As the two finalists battled it out last night for the £100,000 job on Sir Alan Sugar's Apprentice last night, who should pop up on screen amongst a room full of dull property suits but our very own GCG - who surely stole the show with his pertinent and probing question about room size to eventual winner Simon Ambrose.

To say there's been a few parodies of Scotland over the years is like saying there's a few calories in a deep fried Mars Bar, when in truth there's enough to stun an elephant.

Rab C Nesbitt, deep fried heroin, Nessie in a kilt, the Bay City Rollers; the list goes on of creations based partly on Scotland but mainly on adsurdity.

However, mix these all together, boil them down and season with grated Supergran and you still wouldn't have something quite as ridiculousness as the Dorchester Grill Room.

Poor Aiden Byrne, the head chef in charge of the excellent food offering.

With 10 foot tall paintings of kilted jocks lining the walls, looking like they were lifted directly from an 18th century Scottish Bodens catalogue, tartan so garish you could stare at it in the mistaken belief it's a magic eye puzzle and a dolphin might soon appear, and brothel bed-head style chairs, you expect a ginger Byrne to appear from the kitchen wearing a Rangers shirt and clasping a half eaten turkey leg.

But instead he's a softly spoken Liverpudlian. Un-ginger, I should point out. And the poor chap has to serve up his excellent dishes of complex flavour into what appears, to all-extents and purposes, to be a large, decorated shortbread tin.

Popped in for dinner at Club Gascon last night - stunning food, of course, and fabulous service - but what really caught my eye (apart from being on the next table to David Walliams of "I'm a lay-dee" fame) was the amazing floral displays.

So what? I hear you ask. Well, just clap your eyes on this beauty. And the person responsible for this incredible piece of work? Chef-patron Pascal Aussignac.

It's suggested every now and then, usually by people wearing berets and living in bedsits, that as a nation we've forgotten how to protest. Not like the French, they say; they know how to kick up a fuss.

They're right: we don't storm the Champs Elysee or set fire to our own hair because someone's trying to make us work of an afternoon. No; what we do well is to hold very British protests. Protests that involve corduroy slacks, maybe, or queuing.

And no one has proved this better than the lovely dinner ladies of Walthamstow.

Slightly miffed at some working conditions, a 200 strong force decided to drum up publicity for their plight with a protest outside the London Fifteen restaurant. Not that it was Fifteen's fault of course, but everything-Jamie Oliver is now inextricably tarred with the school dinner's brush. Plus it would be a good PR stunt, they thought as they stirred their Smash.

I dined on Saturday at the White Horse in Bearsted, in deepest, darkest Kent for Father-in-Law's day.

The White Horse was once a Beefeater and one of the pubs bought by Mitchells & Butlers from Whitbread last year . Since then M&B has spent a fair old amount ripping out the 'Beefeater charm' and putting in leather seating, copper bars and cow-hide rugs. While you can argue till the cows come home about the respective merits of a chain pub vs the old village pub has all the money been worth it?

Last night your fearless blogger attended a dinner at Pearl hosted by Beautiful Beer , the beer campaign backed by the British Beer and Pub Association.

The idea was competitive drinking. No - not the kind of drinking that is 'socially irresponsible' - but which drink is the best beer or wine. A five course taster menu was put together by Jun Tanaka - star of Channel Four's Cooking It and each course was paired with a wine selected by Pearl wine director Michael Davis, and a beer chosen by Rupert Ponsinby of The Beer Academy. Scores were noted about which tipple worked best with the food and all the guests were lubricated with a few glasses of Belgian champagne beer to get the party started.

Five courses, six beers, five wines.. but who won?

It seems hospitality operators could be missing out on potential revenue because tourists are being denied entry into the UK for "ridiculous reasons".

A new report into UKVisas, the government body that controls UK entry visas, by Linda Costelloe Baker, the independent monitor for entry clearance, highlighted some of the reasons cited for refusal.

Last night this blogger was lucky in more ways that one. Firstly he was able to eat at FuLuShou, the Pan-Asian restaurant attached to The Casino at The Empire. Secondly I managed to turn £30 into £70 playing roulette in the casino before dinner!

The Casino at The Empire takes the same principles the great Las Vegas casinos do and applies them to London's Leicester Square on a slightly smaller scale. The gambling experience is not seedy, as it can be in some casinos, but open plan, accessible and with a genuine sense of excitement.

More importantly it integrates the gambling experience with fine hospitality....

I was at the Association of Catering Excellence conference on sustainability yesterday, held at the impressive Bank Street offices in Canary Wharf, home to investment bank Lehman Brothers.

A slick event, which although only a day in length had plenty to digest on the issues of sustainability and corporate social responsibility, which let's be fair the latter of which isn't the most sexy subject on paper.

Commendably, well chosen speakers such as chefs Oliver Rowe and Michael Caines and the ever entertaining Geoff Ward helped make sense of an area of debate that tends to leave you with more questions than answers.

I will of course be writing a report in next week's Caterer - once I catch my breath - so look out for that. I'll leave you with conference chairman Chris Sheppardson's thoughts on the interesting times we live in (in contract catering).

Since I started reporting on the world of hospitality four or so years back it's always been self evident that, at a certain level, everyone knows everyone else in the business.

As a journalist this is both useful and frightening (better not piss anyone off too much).

However, after last week's Association of Catering Excellence conference on sustainability it seems I can add to the above that not only does everyone know everyone but you are also probably related to them!

Everyone likes to win stuff.

That's why we have the yearly nonsense of the Oscars, the banality of the Soap awards (most gormless twit) and the jewel in the crown of them all, the Cateys (be warned high-spirited penguins expected around Grosvenor House hotel in London next Tuesday).

And so to last week's ACE conference on sustainability, which fittingly for a catering conference had its Clean Kitchen Awards but alas no Jessica Alba, Naomi Watts or Salma Hayek in sight (although there was former track star Roger Black on hand to swoon over).

Today Tony Blair hands over the reigns of power to Gordon Brown in the culmination of the infamous pact between the two made in Islington restaurant, Granita.

As the hospitality industry marks this passing of power it is worth thinking about the story of the Granita: the spiritual home of new Labour.

The restaurant ran successfully for ten years under the same management until a tumultuous hand-over period that saw the establishment change management. It closed in 2004 and was turned into Desperados: a Tex-Mex.

Legend had it that Brown ate nothing on the night the "Granita pact" was formed on table 13. One wonders if he will be returning to 127 Upper Street to mark his ascent to power with a chimichanga and a margarita?

I've just hot footed it from the BHA Centenary lunch at the Grosvenor House Hotel where guests were, among other things, treated to a speech from Sir Rocco Forte sporting a new beard. So he took the opportunity to explain why he had grown one.

Apparently Sir Rocco has been mistaken for many an actor over the years, most commonly Dustin Hoffman and, on occasions, Al Pacino. But while recently staying in Florida, and doing a few laps of the hotel pool, he found three old biddies (as he called them), pointing at him while they chattered away to each other.

David Michels, board member of Vector Hospitality, has had a pretty rough June but it is nice to see he has not lost his sense of humour.

After Britain's first hotel REIT (real estate investment trust) failed to get of the ground the Caterer Blog can exclusivley reveal that Michels is still on the prowl for investors.

Speaking at today's British Hospitality Association Centenary Luncheon, Michels entered into the after-dinner speaking with gusto - announcing that there would be an auction with a starting price of £2b for a company called Vector.

I'm afraid to say that there were no takers at that price....

Contract caterer Aramark officially opened "the poshest basement in London" this week in the words of its consultant executive chef Gordon Ramsay (who had a limerick read to him by one barmy punter at the event).

The caterer's splendid new innovation centre at the London Underwriting Centre in the City is a collection of its "high street" offerings, technology and a demonstration kitchen put in place to showcase the range of options it has to offer customers as well as letting them "get stuck in" on the food side.

Featuring lots and lots of new sparkly equipment the innovative move has been driven by Aramark's passionate belief it has to become a customer focused rather than purchasing led entity to flourish in this brave new century. Sound stuff

The vast majority of pub operators in England have spent the past couple of years preparing for Sunday’s smoking ban, redefining their food offer, building shelters outside and generally having a right good clean-up.

But some landlords appear to be taking the Homer Simpson approach – bury your head in the sand and everything will work out alright in the end – to the legislation.