The Editor's Hospitality Blog

Hot on the heels of Raymond Blanc's new kitchen reality show, The Restaurant, which began last Thursday, tonight sees the start of the new series of Hell's Kitchen, in which Marco Pierre White tries to impart cheffing skills to a hapless bunch of celebs.

I'm going along for dinner tonight, courtesy of Hobart, who have supplied the kitchen equipment used by Marco and his students. I'll tell you how it goes when I get back. Meanwhile, check out this interview with Marco on the Mirror's website. It sounds as though Marco is getting off on the wrong foot with the national press already ...

I've just got in after dining at Hell's Kitchen (courtesy of Hobart) and I'm determined to tell you what it was like to be fed by Marco Pierre White and his ragtag band of celebrities before I hit the sack.

Filming is taking place in a pretty insalubrious part of East London. As I drove past kebab shops and derelict tower blocks, I became convinced I was in the wrong part of town. But then the cluster of paparazzi around the doorway into the studio told me I was in the right place. Remarkably, their lenses all seemed to be lowered as I swept past them. I guess they were all changing films rolls, and must have missed me ...

Inside, we were whisked past an imposing, wall-high image of Marco wielding a meat cleaver and to our table by an ITV producer, who explained en route that all phones were to be turned off and no visits to the toilet were to be paid between nine and ten pm.

As we walked through the dining room to our table, I spied Marco, sporting a kamikazi-style bandana, barking orders from the pass at a wan-looking Anneka Rice. Stopping only to marvel at how tall Paul Young is, I passed on to our table.

Once sat down, we immediately began celeb-spotting. I spotted George Galloway sporting a rather poor beard. A fellow diner pointed out Carol Thatcher. Does one have to have been in a reality show to eat out Hell's Kitchen? If so, what was I doing there? A small boy with a jet-black quiff the size and shape of a duck breezed in. "He's off Pop Idol", a companion told me, "or was it X-Factor?" Show host, Angus Deayton wanders from table to table filming links to camera. Ooh, isn't he small, people whisper, as he passes.

Dinner was excellent: ragout of shellfish, pig's trotter in a morel sauce and blackberry souffle. But sadly, there were no screaming matches at the pass, no tears, wailing or gnashing of teeth from humiliated celebs; and no forcible ejections, by Marco, of diners daring to ask for the salt cellar to pep up their meal. In short, the service went by calmly and uneventfully. Didn't anyone bother to brief Chef that slick service makes for dull telly?

A trio of small girls with big hairdo's swang past to the loo. Are they married to footballers, I wondered, or in a pop band? Or perhaps both? Who could say. Either way, they were probably in junior school when Marco last stepped behind the stove.

By ten thirty, all diners had been fed and watered. I grabbed a few words with Marco, who was beaming with pride at the slickness of the operation, and did the universal chefs' signage for hard work: the clenched fist pumping horizontally backward and forward from the tummy button.

As I left, a text came through on my mobile from a friend. "Punch George Galloway in the face and I'll buy you a pint". But George, Carol and the bloke with the black duck on his head had already left the building, leaving me to wonder how I would ever get home from the arse-end of nowhere on the night of a tube strike.

Clearly the season of the hospitality TV show is upon us. Joining Raymond, Jamie, Marco and Nigella this Thursday is Ruth Watson, whose third series of The Hotel Inspector starts on Five, on Thursday evening.

The show sees Ruth attempt to reverse the fortunes of ailing British hotels and B&Bs. In advance of the first episode, Ruth has sent us her ten top tips for improving your hotel. Here are five of her ideas, to whet your appetite for the programme.

* Keep all external signs clean and have up-to-date ratings information on them.

What other tips would you add to this list? Let us know.

Thanks to the Guardian's excellent Word of Mouth food blog, I have discovered a brilliant list of some of the world's strangest restaurant concepts.

These are five of the weirdest in no order - but perhaps you have others to beat them?

The Pol Pot-themed Khmer Rouge Experience cafe in Phnom Penh takes tasteless dining to new heights.

At Dinner in the Sky in Brussels, guests eat at a table hanging 50m up in the air.

Good news for Caterer’s Stub out Smoking campaign which launched in September 2004 and called for a ban on smoking in all workplaces.

Two studies out in the past week are claiming a drop in heart attacks among people living in Ireland and Scotland, a year after the smoking ban was introduced in both countries.

A study of nine Scottish hospitals reported a 17% fall in admissions for heart attacks, while in Ireland the number of heart attacks is believed to have dropped by 14%.

According to the research in Ireland, at Cork University Hospital, the drop in heart attacks was more marked in smokers than non-smokers, suggesting they smoked less as a result of the ban.

There's only one thing better than hotel guests who are prepared to come and spend money at your hotel - and that's guests who return to your hotel time after time to spend money.

Two such guests are David and Jean Davidson, who have been living in Travelodge hotels in Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire for the past twenty years. Now, the Davidsons are to have a room named after them at the Gonerby Moor Travelodge, in recognition of their two decades of loyalty to the brand.

The Davidsons estimate they have paid out £100,000 in bills, but point out that this has bought utilities, a personal housekeeper and a tidy room with good disabled access (thumbs-up, Travelodge!) since 1987.

Do you have any seriously loyal customers at your hotel? How long have they been with you? And do long-stay guests become part of the hotel, after a while, like the Major at Fawlty Towers? Let us know.

I've just heard that the government has confirmed a fresh case of foot and mouth in Surrey. The outbreak is at a farm near Egham. A ten-kilometre control zone has been set up around the farm.

Rural tourism took a devastating hit last time the disease took hold, in 2001, so we need to hope the Prime Minister's claim that the outbreak has been contained is correct. If you run a business in the area and want to keep up to date with developments, go to our sister site, Farmer's Weekly Interactive, for the latest news.

In this week's Caterer and Hotelkeeper, we offer twenty surefire ways to hang on to your most valued hotel, restaurant, bar and contract catering staff. Here are just five of them, to whet your appetite.

Our top twenty was put together with the assistance of such luminaries as Jane Sunley, from learning providers Learnpurple; and Sean Wheeler, group director of people development, Malmaison/Hotel du Vin.

ONE Keep things interesting: vary tasks and responsibilities to avoid staff boredom.

TWO Carry out regular appraisals: formal objectives provide focus and motivation, as well as a valuable communications channel.

THREE Don't be a harsh critic: avoid a blame culture, but let staff to learn from mistakes made.

FOUR Allow people to grow: allow employees the chance to strectch themselves and shine.

FIVE Say thank you: easy to do, just as easily forgotten.

Let me know what tools you use to motivate staff and keep them onboard.

The Coolbrands Council published its annual list of the UK’s coolest brands last week. Hospitality was well represented, with the likes of Malmaison, the Lowry Hotel, 42 The Calls, Smiths of Smithfield and Le Manoir aux Quatr’Saisons all earning a ranking.

Also listed were cool global brand destinations such as Cambodia, Croatia, Malaysia and Vietnam.

With the launch of Winning: A tourism strategy for 2012 and beyond, this week, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport hopes to ensure that Brand UK rates highly on similar lists across the world in the coming decade.

The DCMS forecasts that, by capitalising upon the opportunity the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games provide to showcase all we have to offer as a nation, we could generate £2.1bn from additional tourism between now and 2017.

The strategy provides a blueprint for improving international perceptions of Britain, delivering a first-class welcome to all visitors, improving tourist infrastructure and facilities, boosting the skills of the workforce and driving up accommodation quality by increasing the number of places that are accredited under the national star-grading scheme.

But the document fails to detail exactly how all these improvements will be paid for. Substantial investment will be required to realise an extra £2.1bn increase in tourism revenue; you have to speculate to accumulate.

We will have to wait until the announcement of the Comprehensive Spending Review in October to see if the government is prepared to put its money where its mouth is, by committing an adequate funding strategy to capitalising on the Olympics. Fair words alone will not spark significant growth in in-bound and domestic tourism off the back of the Games.

Paul Gayler, Executive Chef de Cuisine at London's Lanesborough Hotel, will be swapping his chef’s whites for a running vest, when he competes in the Great North Run on Sunday, September 30th.

Joining Paul on the half-marathon are Andrew Bennett of the Sheraton Park Lane, Henry Brosi of The Dorchester, Tony Cameron of the Oriental Club, Glenn Ewart from Churchill’s China, Ray Lorimer of Unilever Foodsolutions, Martyn Nail of Claridges and Stephen Scuffell of the Crown Moran Hotel.

The run forms part of a series of sponsored activities Paul has planned to raise money for the Teenage Cancer Trust.

Paul and his team hope the industry will support them by pledging a donation to the charity. If you would like to support them, visit www.teenagecancertrust.org/sponsor/mayqueenappeal/.

Are you running the Great North Run? let us know your time if you are.

Spare a thought for our embattled pub and bar operators. First, there was the bureaucratic headache of the updated Licensing Act to negotiate, in 2005.

Then, in July of this year, there was further upheaval and an increased burden of responsibility when the ban on smoking in public places went live.

Now, we learn that smoking ban and Licensing Act are conspiring together to place some high-street operators in a legal cul-de-sac.

The smoking ban dictates that customers have to head outside to light up, either in a dedicated space or outside on the pavement. If they don’t, license holders are held to account.

But then who is to blame if clusters of smokers act noisily or rowdily outside and become a nuisance for local residents? You guessed it: it’s the license holders – and the Licensing Act empowers local authorities to suspend licenses and impose enforced periods of closure upon them.

In other words, compliance with one law is, in some cases, directly leading to non-compliance with another.

Of course operators need to be mindful of their duties to their local community; but for local authorities to take such a Draconian approach so quickly (and examples are already emerging) is unfair. They should cut operators some slack as they come to terms with the huge changes to their commercial landscape in the past year.

Read more news on the licensing change on Caterersearch.com

Today, I had lunch at Texture, the new London restaurant set up by Le Manoir graduates and current Caterer and Hotelkeeper cover stars, Agnar Sverrisson and Xavier Rousset.

There's quite a buzz around Texture, and it's easy to see why. Under the beautiful mouldings of its high ceilings, I enjoyed a spectacular meal. Sure, there were enough confits, emulsions, cracklings and wafers to justify the restaurant's name. But what impressed me most was the clarity and intensity of flavours. My first dish, Tomato and Artichoke Textures, grabbed me by the lapels and transported me back to summer evenings spent watering the tomato plants in my mum's greenhouse. And, if the sensation of being on a fishing boat on the South China Sea, brine on your lips and sea wind in your face, could be captured and served on a plate, it would probably taste something like Texture's Mediterranean tuna smoked with Asian flavours.

Lunch done, I popped into nearby Selfridges to see my friend, the store's food and restaurants director, Ewan Venters, and to check out his new Wonder Bar. The Wonder Bar is based around a wine tasting dispenser that allows customers to choose from 52 fine wines in three measures: 25ml, 75ml and 125ml.This 'wine jukebox' means you can sample wines you might not have come across before (some 25ml nips cost less than a pound), or which you might not be able to afford by the bottle (top of the list is a 1996 Chateau Mouton Rothschild Premier Grand Cru, which markets at £70 for 125ml).

To use it, you buy a credit card that can be loaded up to a value of £1000, and which can be topped up. Then you insert the card into the juke box, choose a wine from the wine list, and press the button corresponding to the measure you require.

I whacked £10 on my card, opted for a warming 175ml measure of 1998 Castillo Ygay Gran Reserva Especial Marques de Murrieta Rioja, and still had 20p credit left for another day.

The Wonder Bar is a brilliant idea that empowers customers to drink however much they want of whatever wine they want. What a pity then, that Trading Standards Officers have tried to spoil the party by raising concerns that the dispenser contravenes UK alcohol measures legislation.