The Caterer Blog

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.

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.

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.

OK, so I'm a bit slow off the mark, but dining at Hell's Kitchen on Friday night with The Times's Giles Coren and the Evening Standard's Fay Maschler, allerted me to the article below (published last Monday in The Guardian). Why? Because both food critics were slightly miffed at being critiqued by theatre reviewer Charles Spencer and - horror of horrors - that Jay Rayner (who incidently writes for The Guardian's sister publication The Observer) had been deemed as top journo. Thought you might like to have a butcher's.

A letter has reached Caterer Towers from the much loved Egon Ronay in which he offers his suggestions for the ressurrection of the much loved and currently troubled British pub.

In it he is quite right to say that the British pub is a national institution and it is certainly threatened by a series of bad luck but his solution is already a well voiced arguement; namely turning the pubs catering operations into that of a small restaurant.

While I cannot argue with Ronay that the British pub is a "uniquely British phenomenon", occupying a place in the heart of the British psyche in the same way the bistro inhabits that of the French, great progress has already been made in improving and introducing quality food in the British pub.

Look, for example at The Sportsman in Seasalter, Kent, which picked up its first Michelin star this year.

Gordon Ramsay is expanding his empire with investment in pubs too promising ten pubs this year adding to the Narrow in London's Limehouse, Devonshire House in Chiswick and the Warrington in Maida Vale.

Even the notion that pubs should turn into small restaurants is dismissed by the 2,000 plus sites under the control of Mitchells & Butlers serving in excess of 100m meals a week.

While Ronay's call for a thriving gastropub on every high street is laudable (and even welcome) the economic reality is that it just can't happen. As pointed out today by analysts Horizon there are too many eateries in Britain's mid-market already.

While I can't help but agree with Ronay, the evidence suggests his ideas are not going to happen.

Read the rest of this entry to read Ronay's letter in full.

They pronounce on your restaurants, but what motivates them, and are they fully qualified to pass judgement?

We're offering you the chance to put the Observer's Jay Rayner, Nick Lander from the Financial Times and the Evening Standard's Charles Campion on the spot in our new feature 'Ask the Critic'.

It's a chance to press the UK's top restaurant columnists on exactly how much chef training they've received, for example, or what you should most change at your restaurant - in their opinion.

So e-mail your enquiries to catererfeatures@rbi.co.uk or write to Tom Vaughan, Caterer and Hotelkeeper, Quadrant House, The Quadrant, Sutton, Surrey, SM2 5AS - together we can grill them.