The Caterer Blog

If you're lucky enough to be planning a trip to Europe soon you might be interested in places to grab a bite to eat.

Although McDonald's is everywhere, and you probably won't struggle to track down a branded coffee and croissant, for those looking for something altogether more substantial we have a few choice suggestions. 

Caterer sister title Travel Weekly has done the hard work for us and checked out a selection of Michelin starred hotel restaurants for you to sample when on the continent. Enjoy! 

Lovers of high camp rejoice! Hilton Hotels has teamed up with Sky One's Gladiators for charity.

Yes those latex clad TV warriors are lending their support to Hilton's Around the World in a Day initiative, which last year raised £50,000 for good causes.

Taking place on 29 June, Around the World participants have been challenged to collectively travel the circumference of the earth - 29,901.55 miles - by taking part in one of two events: the competitive Team Challenge or easier-going Miles4fun.

Although giant cotton buds are banned, the Gladiators will be entering a team in the Team Challenge event - so you could be going up against the likes of Spartan, Ice, Enigma and Predator on the day, which should at least put a smile on your face if nothing else. 

For more on the event go to www.hilton-foundation.org.uk

Hilton plans more hotels over the next five years>>

Troubled soul singer Amy Winehouse gets her inspiration from a variety of sources - heartbreak, Motown soul, Mark Ronson and more recently a good old-fashioned honk on the crack pipe.

But here at Caterer we never would have expected the diva to look to hotels to inform her unique style. Not so! It appears that last year after staying at the celeb-haunt Blakes hotel in Kensington, old Amy took quite a shining to one of their key fobs- not least because it bore the same name as her darling husband Blake Fielder-Civil.

Cue a quick visit to the tattoo parl our, with the key fob bearing the Blakes hotel logo in hand. The result was a tattoo bearing the said-logo above her left breast.

One might say she's been "branded".

In times of economic strife it's the businesses that think quickest on their feet that prosper while those failing to get the basics right get just desserts.

Hoping to be the former rather than later, North Yorkshire's Black Swan hotel at Helmsley has created its own take on the world's financial woes with the Credit Crunch Apple Tart.

Created by patisser Martin Towse, the desert is a combination of sweet pastry, almond custard, poached apples, apple vanilla puree and biscuit crumbs - one Credit Crunch that hopefully won't upset anyone.

At £3.25 in the hotel's tea room and £2.50 to takeaway the desert even comes with a Bank of England pleasing food inflation free price.

The hotel meanwhile is hoping that interest rates will soar off the back of the Credit Crunch making it a sound investment.

Is Heston the new Gary Lineker?>>

Food costs - news and features round-up>>
 

It seems given even a hint of a theme those good people in Yorkshire will run with it, hence as the Beijing Olympics get under way we have the Pudding Pentathlon.

Yes sports fans, while pudding is not the obvious choice of althletes it is at least 100% performance enhancing drug-free.

The sweet, which follows fast on the heels of Yorkshire's Black Swan's take on the Credit Crunch, has been created by the Best Western Monkbar hotel in York's head chef Dave Asbury and has five different desserts from the five continents represented by the Olympic Rings.

The desserts lining up under the starter's gun are:

Europe - bread and butter pudding

Oceania - peach melba

Asia - banana fritters

America - key lime pie

Africa - taste of Africa (a tiramisu-style dessert layered with Kenyan coffee sponge).

Quite enough to keep any human-rights protester fuelled and comfortable up their pylon of choice for days.

Sodexo in Olympic hopeful sponsorship deal>>

Tourism industrygroup set up for 2012 London Olympics>>

Just when you think you've seen it all in hotels someone comes up with something so wonderfully pointless that you just have to take your metaphorical hat off to them.

Yes, a recent stay at a hotel in the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire for my friends' wedding supplied a quite unexpected bonus memory.

On checking into our room - a quirky affair with modern touches sitting alongside features such as a four-poster bed, a glance around the toilet became a baffled stare.

Bath and shower - check; toilet - check; slightly weird transparent double basin - check; urinal with glowing blue under-lighter - What!

Yes, oddly next to our conventional toilet there was a wall mounted urinal with flip up lid - let's not be vulgar now, darling - and an odd blue light below to kindly light up your undercarriage.

Of course, the why? was the thing that ultimately stumped me. An attempt to recreate the public loo experience, perhaps? Or - God forbid - extra capacity when you're both in a rush to get to your business meeting/wedding breakfast/ lavatory convention?

Suggestions written on some clean toilet roll to the usual address...

North-east boutique hotel to have Tardis and cinema themed rooms>>

World's first sand hotel opens in Weymouth>>

It is often said that the British army is the finest in the world with the best training.

Of course thanks to the politicians it often feels like it's one of the worse equipped as well, with soldiers forced to make-do-and-mend, share body-armour and, one imagines, say bang to scare off insurgents rather than waste expensive bullets firing weapons.

Still, London's Cavendish hotel is concentrating on the former rather than latter and is offering guests British Military Fitness (BMF) sessions in nearby Hyde Park.

The BMF classes are run by serving or ex-armed forces physical training instructors - no doubt with moustaches - and allow guests to run around the park and excercise while a burly man barks orders at them - to each their own, I guess.

Classes are open to all abilities and as they don't require any fancy equipment are about as environmentally sound as you can get, which is fitting for a hotel named Considerate Hotel of the Year 2007.

Compass Group signs £350m army deal>>

Breakfast for the troops>>