The Editor's Hospitality Blog

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.

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.

Last Friday I witnessed the unlikely spectacle of Marco Pierre White and Sunday Times restaurant critic AA Gill comparing leg hair, and saw a member of the aristocracy dressed as a tramp - all courtesy of Hospitality Action.

White and Gill were joined by food columnist and son of Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, Tom Parker Bowles at the shooting of the latest Hospitality Action awareness adverts. This ongoing series of adverts depicts top chefs suffering the sort of life-altering set-backs often experienced by beneficiaries of HA funding. Previous ads have portrayed Raymond Blanc being led by a guide dog, Heston Blumenthal living rough and Anton Edelmann languishing in a hospital bed.

Gill arrived on set first, sporting a stained and raggedy jacket and trouser combo that looked as if he had lost one of his review-lunches down the front of it. "I borrowed one of your suits, Marco", he claimed, when the Hell's Kitchen supremo appeared. Marco exemplified Oxford Street doorway-chic, his Robinson Crusoe-style trousers exposing his ankles and calves. After a few moments spent gauging who had the fuzziest legs, they slumped onto a park bench, vodka bottles in hand, singing "underneath the arches" and laughing like drains.

Only last week, Gill wrote in the Sunday Times: "I always book under a false name, but I never wear a disguise. Getting into a wig and a costume and talking in a funny voice to eat dinner is weird and way too self-obsessed – it’s the sort of thing they do in America." According to HA chief exec Penny Moore, he broke that rule last Friday, when he and Marco left the shoot to review a nearby restaurant in full down-and -out garb. Considering that he had sportingly given up a day of his life to support HA, I think we can forgive him ...

Tom Parker Bowles took longer to emerge from make-up than his fellow tramps. "It's hard to make an aristo look rough", quipped Marco.

Look out for the resulting adverts in future issues of Caterer and Hotelkeeper.

Last night, superchef Alain Ducasse, the man with the most Michelin stars in the world, hosted a star-studded dinner at his new restaurant at London's Dorchester Hotel before it opens to the public tonight.

Welcoming us, Monsieur Ducasse promised not to serve frogs' legs, if guests promised not to mention the rugby world cup.

The table plan read like a who's-who of the UK dining scene: Mark Hix, Tom Aikens, Marcus Wareing, Raymond Blanc, Philip Howard, Michel Roux jnr, Gary Rhodes, Giorgio Locatelli, Henri Brosi, John Campbell, Theo Randall, Sir Terence Conran and many others came to meet the great man and sample his food. At the end of the meal, all of them lined up like kids outside a sweetshop, to view the magnificent kitchen Monsieur Ducasse has had put in at the restaurant.

The sight of so many top-drawer chefs in one room prompted the Vineyard's John Campbell to tell me: "if a bomb drops on the Dorchester now, you'll have nothing to write about anymore in the Caterer!" I replied that it would leave UK foodies dining on beans on toast from then on.

Christopher Cowdray wouldn't have been at all pleased to see a bomb land on us. Christopher is the CEO of the Dorchester Collection. As our seared scallops course arrived, Christopher pointed out to me the amoeba-thin shaving of dried tuna that topped the dish, and which moved like a flickering flame in the heat rising off the scallop below. Stunning.