The Caterer Blog

John Simpson liberating Kabul is often held as the romantic image of journalistic bravado. Or, to a less quixotic extent, Martin Bashir swallowing his vomit as Michael Jackson eyed an 8ft imitation gold sarcophagus from his ‘favourite’ store in Santa Barbara.

And while I have oodles of respect for the pair, I’d argue that putting your body on the line for five days at Glastonbury festival is potentially more harmful than all the snipers in Kabul and more nauseating than all the faux Egyptian ornaments a lunatic can afford.

In the times between music and drinking, it's prudent to try and squeeze in the occasional meal, however much your body wants to reject it out of hand. If you want to avoid the tinned ravioli then finding a decent food store is more of a gamble than opening a seasoned portaloo.

A New York chef has decided to sue a former employee over the culinary equivalent of plagiarism.

Rebecca Charles, chef-proprietor of Pearl Oyster Bar in the West Village in Manhattan, has lodged a legal suit against her former sous-chef of six years Ed McFarland.

She is charging him with copying “each and every element” of her restaurant, including the menu and interior style, and recreating it at his own eatery, Ed’s Lobster Bar in SoHo.

The case marks one of the first instances in which a proprietor has gone to court over intellectual property and has brought with it renewed debate over when culinary influence and inspiration become imitation.

Here's a great idea, which like all the best ones is very simple.

While out on my travels recently I got talking to a chap called Ian Hooper, who is looking after the UK part of SeamlessWeb.

SeamlessWeb. What the heck is that, I hear you ask? Well it has its genesis in the States.

Two hard working, well paid city executive types were hungry one night and in a bind as the in-house caterers had gone home and they had work to do and rumbling tums. What to do?

Well I've just about recovered from the whirlwind that is the Cateys. If you weren't there or simply face savouring the night again why not take a look at our splendid Caterersearch TV report on our website? It's an emotional rollercoaster for sure...

It's always hard keeping up with high flyers but think how the bods at BaxterStorey must feel.

With Alastair Storey winning this year's Foodservice Caterer Award 2007 at the Catey's -damn good event that you can watch a Cateys taster of online - the contract caterer now has not one, not two but four former Catey winners on its board.

Yes Linda Halliday, Mike Smith and William Baxter have all received the hospitality industry's ultimate accolade in the past, so is it time for the rest of the bosses at the firm to pull their socks up? Maybe so.

"I guess it looks a bit shabby," joked Storey in a post-Cateys phone call. "Maybe I should remove the others from the board until they've got one, too."

The race for the Cateys 2008 starts here.

BaxterStorey profile>>

BaxterStorey at Scott's - a fishy tail?>>

Radio Five Live presenters discussing yesterday's Wimbledon climax this morning hit a brick wall when they tried to recall who partnered Jo Durie to success in the mixed doubles twenty years ago. A deafening silence ensued, as Nicky Campbell and colleagues racked their brains for the elusive name. Finally, a voice piped "Jeremy Bates" from the back of the studio, to much relief. The mystery tennis specialist? Judy Hargadon, Chief Executive of the School Food Trust. Game, set and match Judy ...

Talk’s cheap. Really dirt cheap sometimes.

Take Sainsburys for example. At present it’s championing itself as a supporter of local farmers, running adverts of impossibly content tomato-growers living on the kind of farms that Windy Miller might find saccharine-sweet.

Then, at the same time, it’s employed Jamie Oliver to wax lyrical about its New Zealand lamb, apparently oblivious to the fact that supermarkets’ predilection for shipping the meat 11,000 miles rather than buying it in their own back yard has meant local farmers are getting around £10 less per lamb compared to this time last year. With each ewe producing 2 calves, you can work out what that might do to the economics of a farm with 500 sheep.

It appears the UK's obsession with programmes such as Pimp My Ride, a show where young oiks do daft things to cars such as put saunas in the back or cover them in cuddly fur basically 'cause they can, has leaked into the world of hospitality.

Chuffed with their Catey for Best Group Marketing Campaign, the team at London's Dorchester has decided to give Miss Catey, as she is now known, a splash of colour to make her more in keeping with these celeb. obsessed times.

So darlings, look out for Caterer Group's spin-off What Not To Wear Catey Special coming soon.

Caterersearch TV: The Catey winners in full>>

Congratulations to InterContinental chief marketing officer Peter Gowers (pictured) who has been promoted to Asia Pacific chief executive.

It seems that Gowers, who takes up the role on 1 November, is very well qualified for the job with the press release from IHG keen to inform the world that he holds a B.A in Economics from the University of California, San Diego and a Master of Professional Studies from the School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University

I was intrigued to learn whilst researching this week's story about the Cornish nutters threatening Rick Stein and Jamie Oliver that the former is the uncle of Radio 1 DJ Judge Jules.

In the spirit of informing you further dear reader and making sure the story was correct I attempted to contact Jules for confirmation.

Given his extraordinarily busy summer schedule - with gigs stretching from London to Ibiza to Greece to Holland - I didn't expect a reply for a wee while, but fair play to the lad he came back within a few hours.

Are school caterers on the march to war? Will dinner ladies across the land cast down their ladles and storm the barricades?

We’re use to strikes from nurses, teachers, posties and the French but school caterers?

Certainly the frustration and anger of many delegates at the Local Authority Caterers Association (LACA) conference in Birmingham last week was palpable and led to some tasty debate.

Irene Carroll, LACA national chairman, set the scene in her opening address by imploring the Government to put its money where its political mouth is. Carroll said ministers must fund the transformation of the school meals service, which they had so eagerly launched into when campaigner Jamie Oliver was still on the scene making plenty of noise, properly.

Well there is nothing more amusing than someone else's misfortune to cheer you up if you think that your day isn't going exactly to plan.

Take Papa Johns pizza boss Nigel Travis, over visiting London last week.The poor chap had 'misplaced' his Blackberry in the back of a London taxi cab. It was quite a blow for the Essex-born but US-based pizza mogul who relies implicitly on the device often known as 'crackberry' (for its addictive qualities) to run the company while overseas. As the interview with Caterer was being conducted word crept through that the device had now been found in Lambeth North police station - not entirely the location for an evening's entertainment Travis had envisaged.

Unfortunately more calamity was to follow..

I ranted a few days ago about company branding overusing the term local to the extent where it now has less credibility than spandex. But I’ve found a buzzword that I think irks me even more: fresh.

Some food companies have cleverly rewritten the dictionary for the term, making it out to no longer mean ‘recently caught or picked’, as you might assume, but instead to mean ‘not frozen’.

Pizza toppings are now ‘fresh’, boxed sandwich fillings are now ‘fresh’.

Brilliant. On those lines of understanding you could go on to classify all the following as fresh: week-old underpants, roadkill, foodborne botulism, Red Rum.

Having been a guidebook inspector himself, David Young, proprietor at the Cross at Kingussie, must just love reading about his business on travel websites.

But a recent entry may suggest a service that even David, a hugely hospitable man, isn't prepared to carry out. It appeared on www.responsibletravel.com and attempted to take large chunks of text from the Cross's own website - sadly missing out a rather important sentence or two.

For the offending excerpt, read on...

It is not often Caterersearch gets beaten to the punch on a story but we're happy to hold our hands up when it happens.

This afternoon we reported that Compass Group's FMC had won a three-year extension to provide catering at Southampton Football Club.

Alas Saints themselves had already revealed this exclusively to their fans on their official website last night.

But were the supporters grateful? Not on your nelly.

So, the hunter becomes the hunted, the chewer the chewed, the blah-er the blah-ed etc. Every article about the Sydney restaurant that successfully sued a critic started with a rehash of this idiom, so why differ?

It’s not the first time that a restaurant has managed this feat. In Belfast in 2000, Goodfellas Italian restaurant successfully sued The Irish News for £25,000 because of bad comments. The irony of an Irishman running an Italian restaurant with the name Goodfellas, suing because the article made them ‘look amateur’, obviously lost on the jury.

While Goodfellas is by all accounts still operating, the Sydney restaurant, Coco Roco, that sued the Morning Heralnd promptly went bust. Why? I’m guessing because it was rubbish, just as the paper suggested. But the Sydney High Court still decided the review had indeed been detrimental to business.

To me this all seems a load of tosh. As AA Gill pointed out over the weekend, no other reviewer would be sued for his opinion: a film critic, for example, wouldn’t have Tom Selleck’s mustachioed lawyers (I assume that’s how he selects them) knocking on his door because he slated Three Men and a Little Lady. Same for music and theatre critics.

"The only people to have benefited from the Jamie Oliver effect on school meals have been local shops and businesses," said school caterer Bill Campbell in a semi-serious response to my questions about the state of the school meals service in England.

I’d met the business operations manager for Shire Services - the catering arm for Shropshire County Council - at the Local Authority Caterers Association (LACA) annual conference in Birmingham last week (see tomorrow’s write up in Caterer and Hotelkeeper – 19 July - for more).

Now before we get outraged parents attacking us for ignoring the laudable goals of the current school meals project, which is seeing the frankly scandalous standard of grub previously served improved, I should provide some context.

Bill and I had been chatting about the announcement at the LACA conference that the £240m of extra funding from 2008 would not be ring fenced.

Had an interesting catch-up with Oxford Hotels & Inns this week, to discover what was going on at the company which rose from the ashes of the collapsed Swallow group last September.

There's plenty of investment across the group, with spend expected to hit £6.3m this year. This encompasses new acquisitions and refurbs of some of its properties, which include the likes of the Carnoustie Golf Hotel, the Lugger in Cornwall and the Huntly Arms in Aberdeen.

But despite the impressive catalogue it seems the team is most excited about a deal which is about to be agreed.

I've been told I'm not the only one. There are apparently other victims out there. You know who you are, and what your affliction is. For the rest of you it can be summed up in two words: Raisin' Views.

Yes, Raisin' Views; the quarterly newletter of the raisin community, including movers and shakers in the raisin world, a list of new raisin-themed products and a calender of raisin-themed events.

It seems to arrive every three months, from God knows where, in the letter trays and pigeon holes of people not the least concerned in raisin developments. Despite my best attempts to de-subscribe myself from this hard hitting morsel of journalistic finesse, the people over in Raisin Towers just won't listen, and still it keeps coming.

So, rather than battle them, I have decided to get on board and help the magazine. Read below for my open letter to Raisin' Views.

I've seen a lot of things in hospitality (but I haven't seen an elephant fly) but last week's digestive aid after dinner at the HCPTA annual awards night ticked the Salvador Dali box for sure.

Yes with the BBC Proms in full flow across town at the Royal Albert Hall, as was the wine at host hotel the Landmark in Marylebone, it was our turn to demonstrate our percussion talent or lack of.

Boom Whackers - not a type of experimental Australian jet engine - were the name of the game. Coming to a team building day near you soon, these coloured, hollow cylinders are banged together to make a pleasingly loud noise.

The pizza is a beautiful invention - from its humble beginnings in the wood-burning ovens of southern Italy to today's supply chain focused pizza delivery organisations - and sometimes a slice of 'pie' (as the Americans infuriatingly call it) is the only thing that will satisfy you.

So well done Domino's Pizza for keeping itself at the peak of the toppings innovation curve. Not content with satisfying our cravings for delivered food with the "meat lover" and the "meat packer" (both containing four types of meat) they followed the Gillette school of razor innovation (who needs four blades when now you can have five?) with the Meateor - a five meat topping pizza made famous in this advert.

As if Pepperoni, Sausage, Meatballs, Ground Beef and Smoky Bacon was not enough (and I can see people crying out for more meat) Domino's is to bring out the Scrummy - a pizza that contains six (count them) types of meat and is aimed at the rugby fan (hence the witty title) as it will be unleashed on unsuspecting customers during this autumn's rugby world cup in France.

While the mystery sixth meat is yet to be revealed (Tandoori chicken seems like a glaring omission) the next logical step has to be a 7 meat pizza. The Seven Deadly Sins perhaps? Domino's can have that idea for free.

I was in the queue at my local Caffè Nero earlier today (which I fear I am addicted to) and I saw firsthand the wonderful effect the marketing bods have had on the, you'd think, simple process of buying a coffee.

An older fellow in front of me made the hesitant mistake of asking for a small black coffee and a cup of tea (ah, a coffee bar virgin I thought).

The barista, as we will now call the trained serving staff, let the black coffee request slide by and assumed the poor pup meant americano (double espresso topped up with water in Nero's case).

However small is a term that is obviously unacceptable and beaten into the new recruits during training - perhaps they're given a roasting if they use it? Mean beans - and the girl serving took umbrage at this "rude word" and chastised the customer informing him in no uncertain terms that the only option was regular or large.

A while ago, Pete Townshend was arrested for downloading child porn. His defence? He was researching an article. That was in 2004. I’ve yet to see that article materialise.

My point? Not all research is done in the spirit of philanthropy.

This tenuously links to hospitality by means of a Monsieur Francois Simon, the critic who “spills the beans” on restaurants. I presume not literally. He has been sloping his way round Parisian restaurants over the past years with a hidden camera, filming the street, interior, table and dishes, before gently describing the food to camera in his hushed French tones. The footage is edited to a three minute film uploaded onto his blog, Simon Says.

It’s all filmed on a home camcorder. Imagine the Blair Witch Project, except replace snotty teenagers with Michael Winner and haunted woods with London’s Charlotte Street and you’ll have a fair idea of the standard of camera-work. Unfortunately though, in this case, the protagonist survives.

There's been a flurry of awards presented to the great and the good of British hospitality in recent weeks. Among them chef and restaurateur Paul Heathcote, who was awarded an honorary fellowship from Liverpool John Moores University, and Robert Cook, chief executive of Malmaison and Hotel du Vin, who was given an honorary degree from The Robert Gordon University.

Also recognised recently were (as my "male" colleague put it) "dreamy chefs" Chris and James Tanner (pictured below) of Tanners Restaurant in Plymouth.

In the immortal words of 90's singer Alanis Morissette - who's biggest hit was famed for containing no ironic lyrics whatsoever - it is like rain on your wedding day.

Landlord Deejay Royall took over The Bush in Wigan 18 months ago and being a forward thinking sort spent thousands on renovating the boozer; turning it into a completely no smoking pub five months ahead of the ban. The idea, presumably, being to entice non-smoking punters into the pub early and keeping their custom while all the 1 July hoopla took hold.

Instead the idea became Royall's "black fly" in his chardonnay. He told the Wigan Evening Post: "Basically, we ran out of customers.

"People started to go to other pubs that hadn't introduced the smoking ban yet and then when it came in July they stopped coming in altogether."

As Alanis would wail it is exactly like "A no-smoking sign on your cigarette break," but at least Royall understands that life has a funny way of helping you out...

A panel of experts have compiled a list of food’s best and worst moments, to mark the 100th edition of Waitrose Food Illustrated.

Matthew Fort, Prue Leith, Stephen Bayley and Rowley Leigh trawled through the history books of food and cooking, to come up with the '100 Greatest Moments in Food' and the ‘Hall of Infamy’ for the least glorious discoveries in food history.