The Editor's Hospitality Blog

News has reached Caterersearch that Head of Communication at Elior UK, Ian Styles, steps down from his position next week to pursue what he calls "an exciting and challenging new venture away from our business".

We'll be speaking to Ian in due course. Meanwhile, we wish him all the best with his future plans.

Catering colleges have suffered a few body blows in the pages of Caterer and Hotelkeeper over the past few months. First, Marco Pierre White brands them "the biggest waste of time", in an exclusive interview with the Caterer. Then, Oliver Peyton calls college "a stop-off before you're sent to prison".

As you can imagine, letters and emails have been flooding in as a result. The following excerpt is representative of the many responses we have received:

"Making sweeping statements such as this is reckless and irresponsible. If I were to say that all restaurants in this country were a disgrace ... people would consider me an idiot. In reality, there are some excellent restaurants in this country but many more that need to improve".

Where do you sit in this debate? let us know either way.

I'm just back from a magnificent, ten-course tasting menu prepared by two Michelin-starred chef John Campbell and his brigade at the Vineyard in Stockcross - ooh, get me!

The dinner was part of the hotel's 2007 Chef's Table festival, during which John and five invited chefs are preparing tasting menus that reflect their differing cooking styles. Other nights are being taken care of by Phil Howard of The Square, Brett Graham of the Ledbury, Nobu's Mark Edwards, Angela Hartnett of the Connaught (pictured) and David Thompson of Thai restaurant, Nahm.

Chefs' Table is an inspired idea. For guests, it offers a chance to enjoy Michelin-starred food out of London. (To ensure they feel part of the occasion and get a real sense of the chefs serving them, plasma screen televisions in the dining room relay a live feed from the kitchen.) For the hotel, it's a great way to raise profile and boost occupancy levels. And for staff, it offers an exciting break from the norm, and a chance to work with eminent chefs. Tales were circulating, last night, of commis chefs stopping to video goings-on in the kitchen, on their phones.

Of course, having a two Michelin-starred chef like John in the kitchen makes it that much easier for the Vineyard to attract big names totheir festival. Still, maybe you could consider some similar kind of initiative to drive footfall in your restaurant?

John' s menu in full

Local wild harvest
Feves, bacon, mushrooms, crayfish

terrine of suckling pig
Piccalili flavours

Organic salmon
Foie gras, red cabbage, apple

Sheepdrove organic chicken
Sweetcorn, wild watercress

Veal
Rump, sweetbreads, cheek

Beetroot ravioli
English goat's cheese, summer squash

Cream cheese
Carrot and orange

Cucumber
Mango and lime

Highclose red berries
White chocolate, olive oil and balsamic

Banana and passion fruit
Raisin panna cotta

I got my first taste of the new Wembley Stadium on Sunday, when I attended the Community Shield match between Man Utd and Chelsea. The place looked beautiful: blue sky, red seating and green grass combined to magnificent effect.

However, the People 1st representative who kindly hosted me for the day cannot have been too impressed by the bar staff that served us our pre-match pint of lager. Clearly, here was someone in dire need of a bit of skills investment ...

You might think that paying £3.50 for a plastic mug of lager would entitle you to a civil response to your order, perhaps even a smile. You'd be wrong.

The punter in front of us asked to have his pint replaced with one with a head of froth. The attendant instead sploshed the dregs from one of an array of half-empty beakers beside her into his pint, like a broke student minesweeping in the Nelson Mandela bar, creating all the fizz of an Anadin past its sell-by date.

As we stepped up to the counter, she scrutinised us wordlessly. Were we another couple of trouble makers about to make her life difficult by demanding lager with a suggestion of carbonation? the truth was even worse than that: I was about to attempt to settle a £7 bill with a £20 note. This flaming liberty drew a withering look and a silence that was broken only by an expansive sigh.

Now, I know that serving lager to 80,000 baying football fans must bring its own challenges. Still, I reckon visitors to our national stadium deserve a modicum of respect and civility. Having enjoyed the hospitality of the staff at the O2 Dome recently, I know it's not an imposssible ask.

I've just finished the first chapter of Gordon Ramsay's autobiography, Humble Pie. It makes for pretty sobering reading and casts light upon the upbringing that made Ramsay so determined to make a success of his life.

Right from the book's introduction, Gordon takes off the brash, aggressive mask he wears on TV and in the glossies:

"My life, like most people's, is about keeping the wolf from the door. It's about hard work. It's about success. Beyond that, though, something else is at play. Is it fear? Maybe. I'm as driven as any man you'll ever meet ...When I think about myself, I still see a little boy who is desperate to escape, and anxious to please. Where am I trying to get to? I wonder ... Work is who I am, who I want to be. I sometimes think that if I were to stop, I'd cease to exist."

Chapter one focuses on Gordon's father, a pipe-dreaming, part-time country and western-singing chancer, philanderer and wife-beater. As Ramsay senior lugged his family from town to town, up and down the country, to avoid arrest or to seek employment, Gordon's feelings for him "hardened into hatred". Yet the chef is disarmingly honest about the confusion of emotions he felt upon meeting his father many years later, an old, broke and broken man; and then upon hearing of his death soon afterwards.

It's very revealing that Gordon sped straight back to his London restaurant, Aubergine, after his father's funeral. For so many chefs, the kitchen seems to offer safe haven from the outside world:

"I was there, on the pass, working as hard as ever, trying not to think ... I don't think I've ever needed my kitchen so much in all my life".

Interesting trivial fact: Gordon's father had dreams of turning his family into a country version of the Osmonds, but Gordon refused to get involved.

I'll let you know what I think of the rest of the book once I've finished it.

Lunch at L'Ortolan yesterday, the Michelin-starred Berkshire restaurant run by Alan Murchison, who had a funny story to tell about local sourcing. The occasion was a meeting with Steelite International, to get their feedback on current tableware trends.

Alan has just taken over the site of Claude Bosi's Hibiscus restaurant in Ludlow, and opened his new La Becasse restaurant there. He's been bowled over by the profusion and quality of local produce in the area, and amazed by the level of detail he receives about its provenance. For instance, the local farm that supplies his duck eggs pops a piece of card in each delivery with the name of the bird that produced them.

Apparently, diners at La Becasse last Sunday enjoyed their eggs, courtesy of Denise the duck!

Not much time to post this morning - I'm up to London to interview Marco Pierre White and Raymond Blanc together for the September 6th issue of Caterer
, whichMarco is guest-editing. Together, the two can boast five Michelin stars. Marco spent some of his formative cheffing days at Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons, but the two superchefs haven't met for over a decade, so there should be lots of stories to tell when I get back to the office ...

My roundtable discussion with Raymond Blanc and Marco Pierre White, which I referred to in my last posting, was as high-octane and eventful as you'd expect from two such big, impassioned personalities.

I've yet to write up the notes I scribbled through the lunch, and when I make sense of them you'll be able to read my account of the day in the September 6th issue of Caterer and Hotelkeeper, which Marco is guest-editing. Meanwhile, one snippet of conversation springs to mind.

The two chefs are no strangers to catering for - and hobnobbing with - stellar celebrities nowadays. But both could remember the first time they ever catered for a star. For Marco, the star in question was Sasha Distel, for whom he cooked a full English breakfast at the George Hotel in Leeds. Marco admitted that he waited around all day to cook a dinner for the French crooner upon his return from the local theatre where he was performing. Sadly, Monsieur Distel went straight to his room, leaving White desolate.

Raymond's first celebrity diner was the rather more A-list Charlton Heston. "He filled up my tiny red-and-white tablecloth restaurant in Oxford, but he was just a normal guy," reminisced Blanc, who resolved never to be starstruck from that day on.

Who is the biggest star you have ever cooked for? And have you ever been left tongue-tied by seeing one of your idols walk into your restaurant or hotel?

Congratulations to all of the businesses and individuals that have made it onto the shortlists for the Hotel Cateys, and commiserations to all those that weren't successful on this occasion.

At this point, it's customary to point to the number, and the strength, of the entries we received, and I don't intend to break with tradition. We were thrilled with the industry's response to these, the first Hotel Cateys awards; and thrilled, too, by the high quality of many of the entries. Believe me, there were far more success stories in our mountain of entries, than we had space for on our shortlists.

In case you still aren't clear on the relationship between the Hotel Cateys and the main Catey awards, which celebrate their twenty fifth anniversary in 2008, here's a quick explanation.

The Cateys are our flagship awards, and exist to recognise and applaud excellence at the highest level of all sectors of the hospitality industry. They allow us to showcase, for instance, the best chef, manager and hotel of the year. What they cannot do, however, is reward the individuals and teams whose hard work underpins these chefs, managers and hotels.

That is why we have launched the Hotel Cateys, as a complementary award to the main Cateys. By focussing on the core skills of the hotel industry - front of house, housekeeping, F&B - the Hotel Cateys enable us to reward success at a whole new level of operational expertise.

Look out for news of other sector Cateys in future.

A fire has gutted the Penhallow Hotel in Newquay, killing one person and injuring five more. As I write this post, search teams are looking for four other people still unaccounted for.

Once the remains of the building have been made secure, and all guests and staff have been accounted for, there is likely to be an investigation into the hotel's wooden fire escapes. The chief of Cornwall's Fire Brigade has already pointed to concerns over the "structural integrity" of the escapes.

The Hotel is part of the Holdsworth Hotels chain.

Look out for more news on the blaze here on Caterersearch and in next week's Caterer and Hotelkeeper.

If you think sourcing and storing food produce can be a headache, spare a thought for the chefs onboard a cruise liner.

Arcadia was docked in Southampton early this week, taking on fresh passengers before heading off to the Baltic for a fortnight. I got the chance to tour its many galleys and store rooms with Mike Monahan, Corporate Chef. I'll write up my day in full, for the 6th September issue of Caterer and Hotelkeeper. Before then, I thought I'd share some big numbers with you.

Arcadia's 112 chefs create 12,000 meals daily for its 2000 passengers and 950 crew. That's 168,000 main courses in a typical two-week cruise. To serve these meals, the crew has to taken on an average of 220 tons of provisions before setting sail.

This includes:

26 tons of meat
6 tones of fish
9 tons of poultry and game
5 tons of bacon, ham and gammon
70 tons of fresh fruit and vegetable
51,000 eggs
97,000 litres of milk
4,000 litres of ice cream
45,000 cakes and pastries
70,000 frshly baked rolls
5,000 freshly baked loaves
13,000 bottles of champagne and wine
550 gallons of draught beer
49,000 cans of soft drink

The Chairman and Chief Executive of HIT Scotland, Stephen Carter and David Cochrane, were down in London earlier in the week and filled me in on plans for a Highland fling they're planning for the capital, this autumn.

HIT Scotland is a charity that raises funds to support and encourage excellence in the hospitality industry north of the border. On 30 November it's holding HIT Scotland in the City, a St Andrew's Day lunch at London's City Inn. HITS bashes are always huge fun, and any money raised goes to a laudable cause.

Back in the day, the Rolling Stones used to hit the headlines for drugs busts and throwing TV sets out of hotel windows.

Last week, the headlines came after they lit up a few fags onstage during a concert at London's O2 Dome. Rock and roll!

Keith Richards chose an unusual way to make his feelings felt about the UK's smoking ban, on the final night of the Stones' two-year Bigger Bang tour on Sunday night. Walking to the centre of the stage between songs, the man they call the Human Riff put a cigarette between his lips, struck a match and held it tantalizingly close to the tip - before proceeding to bite into his fag and eat it.

Cue much applause from an audience that has probably never applauded a pensioner for eating a cigarette before, and is sure never to again.

Just a short posting - I'm officially on holiday! - to bring your attention to a great blog you should check out. It's called Aidan Brooks: trainee chef.

Aidan is a nineteen-year-old chef from East London, and in his blog he tells his ongoing story of his quest to become a "top-class, world-famous chef". Postings cover everything from Aidan's college studies to what he had for dinner last night, and from his favourite food-related movies to his work experience in Zuma, Boxwood Cafe and Providores.

Which foodie blogs do you go back to time and time again? Want to share them with us?