The Caterer Blog

At the end of June, I posted a blog about Hamish Howitt, the landlord of the Happy Scots pub in Blackpool who has defiantly refused to ban smoking and is being taken to court as a result.

After we ran a news story about his case on Friday, a landlady who is in favour of the ban posted a comment on the blog and opened up a right hornet's nest.

The comments flew in over the weekend and have continued today, with some fierce opinions on both sides. Nazis have been mentioned more than once, to the disdain of one particular reader.

Join the debate here

The cheffing world is reeling from the news that 2006 Roux Scholar Pravin Sharma passed away last Thursday (2 August). The sous chef at London’s Courthouse Hotel Kempinski had been suffering from Leukaemia in recent months and was undergoing a course of treatment.

Bobby Kapoor, head chef at the Courthouse Hotel Kempinski in London and Sharma's boss, wrote to me today to describe his former colleague and friend. He writes:

While randomly digging around Caterer's server earlier today (no, we don't really do any work here) I found this very interesting list of top 10 things not to say to vegetarians (supplied by the Vegetarian Society) from a back issue. We at Caterer HQ thought it was pretty funny but then again none of us is a vegetarian...

Top 10 things not to say to a vegetarian:
1) Bet you’d love a bite of my sausage luv.
2) But where do you get your protein from?
3) You still eat bacon sarnies though, don’t you?
4) I’m veggie too – I just eat chicken and fish.
5) I’m veggie Monday to Saturday, I just can’t miss my Sunday roast.
6) When you say you’re veggie babe, does that mean you don’t enjoy any meat at all(said with a wink and creepy smile from drunk men in clubs).
7) Hi, my name’s Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
8) Do you eat wafer-thin ham though? (From Nana in The Royal Family!)
9) So you’re vegetarian, what about the poor carrots…don’t you think they scream?
10) You don’t look like a vegetarian…you look really healthy.

As most of us in the hospitality industry spend much of our time getting trolleyed, myself included, I thought it wouldn’t be a bad idea to mention a trolley event that’s actually for charity (and better for the liver if not the back).

Alas, not a drink-a-thon but the rather exciting opportunity to decorate a trolley and, with a mixed team of hospitality peers and eager-beaver catering students, race legitimately around the streets of central London in the Slingsby Challenge Cup.

Well, that’s what I’ll be telling the police on my next big night out, anyway.

Here I am just a few weeks into my new job as the web editor of Caterersearch.com and how do I find myself spending the morning? Watching and filming one of the country’s most (in?)famous chefs, Marco Pierre White (MPW), preparing Lobster in a sauce vierge at Luciano’s in central London for a Caterer and Hotelkeeper Masterclass (6 September edition) - ain’t life grand?

If I were to watch Tiger Woods playing golf or Michael Schumacher take a Ferrari for a spin round the block I don’t think I could have witnessed a man more in his natural element. There was a tension in the air from the moment he strode into the kitchen took one look at the lobster and declared it too big and too Canadian.

This was more than enough to put back the schedule as MPW had George, his restaurant manager, send out for a new one that met his specifications.

This gave us time to interview him on camera, a feature that will soon be gracing the Caterersearch site, and get his take on some of the many issues that face the industry, his own motivations his new role in Hell’s Kitchen and his relationship with Gordon Ramsay (MPW will be Caterer's guest editor next month).

I would have been satisfied with that as a good’s day’s work but then we followed MPW and his newly arrived replacement lobster into the kitchen.

Yesterday I was heartened to see that former Colgate-Palmolive employee Mark Angela bagged a £300,000 pay-off leaving Greene King, on top of his £442,000 salary and bonuses, after leaving the pub company earlier this year.

The former head of its managed pub division, whose whereabouts remain a mystery to this day, still has use of his company car until next April under the terms of his contract which should come in handy for his current search for work.

The revelations in this year's annual report also include chief executive Rooney Anand bagging £891,000, including a £422,000 bonus, while tenanted division boss David Elliott earned £488,000, including a £213,000 bonus.

Angela joined Greene King in January 2003 from consumer goods company Colgate-Palmolive, where he was general manager of its Hills Pet Nutrition. Given the perks he's raked in at Greene King it is a wonder he doesn't try his hand at one of Colgate's more famed products - toothpaste - I'm sure his pearly whites will keep shining as he counts his severance pay with a smile on his face.

Occasionally you have to pity those who work in the civil service, not for their lack of corporate perks or thankless working conditions, but for the fact that our taxes can no longer extend to supplying them with complimentary sugar for their coffee and tea.

So while you and I are paying more tax than we ever have in our working lives the poor employees at the Home Office in Croydon now have to pay for sugar if they take it in their hot beverages thanks to the latest initiative by caterers Charlton House.

Apparently light-fingered Home Office employees have been using and abusing the sugar supplies so much that a charge has been put on its head – although it is unclear what the price comparison is between brown and white.

Meanwhile an incentive to get staff to buy said hot drinks from the staff canteen, instead of the nearby coffee houses, has backfired.

Hot on the heels of watching Marco Pierre White in action in the kitchen the other day I had the honour of watching another master of his art in central London when I attended the launch of Adventure Gourmet @ Café Spice Namesté.

Cyrus Todiwala the acknowledged master of Indian cooking showed off his skills before a small group of peers and journalists and treated us all to a selection of some fantastic dishes.

The kheema no puff pattice – spicy lamb mince cooked in a puff pasty sheet were like little pieces of heaven. The prawn with Goan curried rice looked and tasted like angels on the wing that danced across the tongue before delivering a final chilli inspired kick to my taste-buds. And the duck tikka xacutti had some perfectly cooked slices of duck cooked in xacutti masala, the world’s most complicated curry with no less than 21 ingredients which all had to be pan roasted before being pureed with roasted coconut.

Pitty the poor zebu - a breed of cow we knew little of until ITV's Undercover Mum 'exposed' last night that zebu steaks were on the menu in great British pubs.

The programme accused pub operators JD Wetherspoon and Greene King of serving steaks they found to contain zebu DNA. Both Wetherspoon's and Greene King's Hungry Horse chain have subsequently argued that zebu is a breed of beef, albeit one native to warmer climes than Britain, and they have not been putting "sub-standard steaks" on their menus.

While the zebu may be a less attractive animal than its cow cousins, the Hereford and the Angus, there is an argueent that beef is beef and the UK has been dependent on imported food since the end of World War Two.

But the main argument is from the English Beef and Lamb Executive (EBLEX) which excluded zebu meat from its quality standard beef scheme in July.

We were contacted earlier this week by London’s Galvin Bistrot de Luxe about a letter requesting payment for a bogus dry-cleaning incident.

And after putting up a news story on the Caterer website, we discovered Galvin wasn’t the only victim of this sham.

The restaurant recently received a letter asking it to reimburse a £7 dry-cleaning bill after a waiter apparently spilt drink on a diner’s shirt and promised the restaurant would cover any costs. The bill was sent with a letter requesting reimbursement to be sent to Shipu Miah at an East London address.

It was only a matter of time. The new Holiday Inn which overlooks the pitch at Norwich City's Carrow Road ground has issued its first ban to a football fan.

The Southampton supporter received the red card from the hotel after he used a room to watch the remainder of Saturday's game he had been ejected from for persistent standing.

Holiday Inn took the action after he was seen "waving and shouting" to his fellow Saints fans from the room, which had been booked by one of his friends.

Today The Sun told the story of former landlord Andy Banwell who spent the last seven years leasing a total of four pubs on a deck of credit cards.

Banwell racked up debts totaling £250,000 after taking out leases on four pubs in the south-west. The story of his mounting costs on leasing the Monkton Inn near Taunton, The Kellaway Arms near Bristol, The King’s Head in nearby Whitehall and the Bunch of Grapes in Bristol city centre will be told on Channel Four documentary on Friday.

But just how did he manage it in today's cost sensitive environment for pub operators needs to be questioned because if Banwell can get away with it then I am sure there are many more willing to try their hands as publicans to do so too.

So, BBC2's new reality show, The Restaurant, starring Raymond Blanc, began last night

The programme features nine couples whose dream is to run their own eatery. They have to create their perfect restaurant and then open the doors to the paying public.

Each week, one of the restaurants will be eliminated, with the overall winner getting to run their own restaurant, financially backed and personally supported by Blanc with a six-figure sum of his own money.

Premier Travel Inn (soon to be just plain old Premier Inn) has become the latest hotel company to be recognised with its own Wikipedia entry - although the authors of the world’s ultimate and mostly-true information site will have their work cut out to keep up with the budget hotel company’s relentless growth, one suspects.

Premier Travel Inn joins the esteemed likes of Travelodge, InterContinental, Starwood and Marriott in having its own dedicated entry, so if there’s anything you’ve ever wanted to know about the group I suggest you check it out or of course use Caterersearch’s own dedicated Company profiles section (PTI is listed under Whitbread), which we’re in the process of updating and streamlining.

For the full story check out Hotel Blogs

Anyone discovered any other hospitality companies on Wikipedia?

Whitbread restaurant division enjoys buoyant sales>>