The Editor's Hospitality Blog

This week, more than a hundred of hospitality's biggest names and brains converged on London's Grosvenor House Hotel to participate in the judging of the 2007 Catey awards.

Michelin-starred chefs rubbed shoulders with public sector caterers, hotel chain supremos mingled with country-house hoteliers. All involved left the hotel with lips firmly sealed - but I can assure you that our judging panels have once again produced a set of winners that will sit well in the pantheon of previous recipients.

Cateys night this year falls on July 3rd, and you'll find the results of every category - including the Lifetime Achievement Award, which is given every three years and was last won by Anton Mosimann in 2004 - here on Caterersearch on the night.

In case you haven't heard, this year Caterer and Hotelkeeper launches a new set of awards, the Hotel Cateys, to recognise and reward the unsung heroes of the hotel industry.
Do you have a housekeeping team that really delivers? Does your conference and banqueting team offer an outstanding level of service? Or is your hotel chef hitting ever higher standards of culinary excellence? If so, we want to hear about them. As with the Cateys, recipients of Hotel Cateys will be nominated, selected and recognised by their industry peers.

Our website, www.hotelcateys.com, will help you to understand more about the Hotel Cateys, and enable you to enter employees across our 15 categories.

The deadline for entries is June 1st, so there's no time to waste.

Some 1200 captains of industry turned out at this afternoon's BHA centenary lunch at the Grosvenor House Hotel on London's Park Lane - and I got the first name-check of the event!

Opening the event in front of a packed house, BHA Chief Executive, Bob Cotton said, "now I know how Mark Lewis feels when he opens the Cateys!" Bob went on to point out that the BHA lunch was taking place on the very day that power at No 10 passed from Tony Blair to Gordon Brown, meaning that, for a few hours at least, no one in government was formally responsible for regulating the hospitality industry. (Bob later went on to make a plea to "leave us alone and stop trying to regulate hospitality more and more").

The guest list read like a who's-who of the industry. My table alone boasted such luminaries as One Aldych supremo Gordon Campbell Gray, Jeremy Goring of the Goring Hotel and Regent Inns executive chairman, Bob Ivell. There was a very complimentary name-check for Jeremy Goring's hotel later on in the afternoon, to which Jeremy responded by punching the air and whispering "get in there!" to me.

The afternoon's two guest speakers were Sir Rocco Forte and Sir David Michels - who were introduced as "two young men with promising careers ahead of them". In his speech, Sir Rocco questioned the hotel industry's increasingly short-termist, money-oriented approach. He stressed the value of continuity, dedication, nurturing your staff and treating the customer as king.

My favourite tale of the day? Gordon Campbell Gray's admission that when he was in Antigua overseeing the development and launch of his Carlisle Bay resort, the task was so all-consuming, and at times such an uphill battle, that when Christmas Day came, he holed up in his room alone and ate a whole box of Quality Street.

Finally, well done to the Grosvenor House - it can't be easy catering for such a vast number of hospitality bigwigs, and for the record I thought the food was enjoyable and the service professional.

Tomorrow night is Cateys night, when we celebrate the best chefs, hoteliers and restaurateurs in the land; I'll be off home to practice my opening speech in the mirror after I write this posting.

It's a long, hard road to Cateys night. The judging process alone involves three full days of back to back judging sessions at the Grosvenor House Hotel, at which more than a hundred industry experts help us establish another roster of winners. Then there are meetings with the designers responsible for the look and feel of the night, trips up to the Grosvenor House to discuss table plans, seating and menus, discussions with sponsors about their role on the night, conference calls with guest presenters ...

Short and sweet blog today, I'm off to the Grosvenor House on Park Lane for the Cateys. I'll tell you all about it tomorrow...

The 2007 Cateys awards are over, and once again I'm left with a roster of worthy winners, a hatful of memories and a sore head.

If you were there, I hope you had a great time. If you weren't, here, in no particular order, are just a few of my highs and lows from the night.

* I'm always amazed by how many people are involved in pulling together an awards function. As I arrived in the Great Room, mid-afternoon, a swarm of staff and technicians were setting tables, ironing tablecloths, rigging lights, hanging light curtains, even painting walls. The faces of the guys responsible for building the tower of champagne glasses were a picture of concentration.

* Sabrage isn't an easy art to master: just as guests began to drift in for pre-dinner drinks, a hapless Grosvenor House staffer managed to total a whole bottle while trying to lop off its neck with a sword.

* The Grosvenor House Hotel is looking well. I had a suite upstairs, lucky me, and the makeover has resulted in really welcoming guest rooms, and a lobby area that works well.

* Guest presenter, Dara Ó Briain, was great company during the soundcheck in the afternoon. he told me about some of his worst experiences of presenting events, including one bash where every table was festooned with balloons at eye-level - "I felt like I was telling gags to a roomful of ballonheads, and they could only see me from the waist down." During the Cateys, he described the difficulties of presenting in the round (this year's Cateys were conducted on a circular stage in the centre of the Great Room). It's a great format, he said, "because it means half of you get to see my arse at any given moment".

* Radio mikes should be treated with extreme caution. My hands-free headset mike sounded like a good idea, but its tendency to cut out through my opening speech left people comparing me to R2-D2, a Dalek and Norman Collier.

* Great food, as usual, from the team at the Grosvenor House. Marcus Wareing called the veal main course the best he had ever tasted at a Cateys night.

* Cigar-smoking Richard Shepherd doesn't approve of the smoking law, as became abundantly clear in the lively conversation at our table over dinner.

* Congratulations to Yo! Sushi's Robin Rowland for the most vigorous celebration of the night - brandishing his statue in the air, he reminded me of Sir Bobby Moore holding the World Cup aloft in '66.

* The most touching moment? Richard Shepherd's bearhug with Terry Holmes, after Terry had announced he was the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement award. Richard's standing ovation from the audience was also a bit special.

* Chef Director at Lexington Catering, Rob Kirby's five o'clock shadow almost took the skin off my face when he gave me a great big kiss at end of the night.

* Best dressed guest? Clearly Simon Woodroffe (check out next week's Caterer for photo).

Other magazines and websites may be content to focus on a single subset of the hospitality industry, but here at the Caterer Group we like to challenge ourselves.

I like to think of us as a great, big bag of Revels with all the toffees removed - lots of different flavours, none of them disappointing. All facets of the industry are covered, from restaurants to hotels and from pubs to corporate dining, and at times this can make for some pretty varied working days for us journalists.

Take today. At lunchtime, Caterer Towers were visited by frozen meal suppliers (and Cateys sponsors) Apetito, who were keen to present their palatable new range of primary school meals. I tried the lasagne and the meatballs and can confirm that neither would have me calling my mum and asking her to pass me a burger through the school gates.

Three hours later, an impeccably attired gentleman in tails was leading me through the corridors of Buckingham Palace and past the famous first floor balcony from where the Royal Family have done some of their best waving, to a teatime reception at which the new City & Guilds Level 2 dimploma for butlers was unveiled.

The palace was, well, palatial. In common with many of London's poshest addreesses, there was Moulton Brown in the loos. And, inevitably, there was a plate of Duchy biscuits on the sideboard.

I'll write more about the course in next week's Caterer. Suffice to say, it sounds fascinating, and a positive step towards improving levels of service in this country. Course modules such as "introduction to wines, spirits and cigars", "maintaining surfaces and antique furnishings" and "country sports" had me tempted to jack in this editing lark and retrain.

Who's your favourite fictional butler? Mine's Batman's butler, Alfred (pictured).

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.

Head of Prison Service Catering and Public Sector Catey winner Alan Tuckwood was in full comedic flow at this week's CESA Conference at the Cotswold Water Park Four Pillars Hotel.

Appearing onstage immediately after an in-depth global overview by an economist, Tuckwood announced that he had no slides, only a "mystery toy" which he asked delegates to pass among themselves. "There's a weekend away, all expenses paid, for the person that guesses what it is", he promised.

"I run the largest hotel group in the country", Tuckwood continued. "we've got 71,000 beds, a negotiable rack-rate and 105% occupancy."

The audience knew, though, that he had Strangeways or Wandsworth in mind, not Gleneagles or a Four Seasons.

Tuckwood raised the issue of kit maintenance, and said he insists on five-year warranties on all purchases. "I'm prepared to pay, but I expect you to absorb some of the risk", he told his audience of kitchen equipment manufacturers. His message was echoed later by Neil Watson-Jones, head of the Hospital Caterers Association, who challenged manufacturers to offer more innovative ways of building maintenance into packages, now kit is becoming increasingly complex.

The mystery toy turned out to be a prison services butter pat, by the way. No one guessed correctly.

It's been a busy week! I breakfasted with Jaume Tapies, chairman of Relais & Chateaux, last Friday, at the group's recently-opened 'maison' in London's Beauchamp Place. the property is effectively a shop window for the hundreds of luxury restaurants and hotels within the collection, offering passers-by a chance to browse marketing material and cookbooks, get a sense of the properties and book a stay.

Tapies tells me that Relais & Chateaux has been prospecting British hotels and has for the first time been "knocking on doors" at those hotels it feels would be worthy additions to the brand. He expects that at least ten or twelve more UK properties will feature in the collection in the next two to three years. He also promises that the 2009 guide will "change completely" from previous years' editions, with the generic page template replaced by a fresher and more design-led approach.

Monday of this week saw the start of three days of intensive Cateys judging at the splendid Dorchester Hotel on London's Park Lane. I now know the identies of the majority of Cateys winners for 2008 - but if I told you I'd then have to kill you, as they say, so I'm keeping shtumm. What I can tell you is that the winners were chosen by a bewildering array of hospitality's great and good. Judges included Brian Wisdom of People 1st, the IOH's Philippe Rossiter, Bob Cotton, Heston Blumenthal, Hotelier of the Year Michael Gray, Robert Cook of Malmaison and Hotel du Vin, Travelodge's Grant Hearn, William Baxter, Alaistair Storey, Marcus Wareing and a host of other big names.

Judging is an exacting - and exhausting - process. Luckily, I was able to recharge the batteries with a fortifying dinner at Restaurant Tom Aikens, above the King's Road. the occasion was the restaurant's fifth birthday, and Tom pulled out all the stops to create a stunning tasting menu that was complemented by great wines picked by head sommelier and 2008 UK Sommelier of the Year winner, Gearoid Devaney. Happy birthday, Tom.

One award not yet allocated is the Silver Award - and we need your help with this category. Which individual has, in your opinion, done more to further the cause of UK hospitality in the past 25 years? let us know and you could win yourself a pair of tickets to the industry 's Oscars night in July.

Just a quick post to say well done to the deserved winners of the British Hospitality Association's (BHA) awards, which were announced at the industry trade body's annual luncheon yesterday.

Catey winning Baxterstorey won the training award for its Chef Academy, and fellow contract caterer Sodexo won the environment award (group) for "green" best practice throughout its organisation.

Pub company Orchid won the large business food category and Lakeside hotel in Cumbria the small business food catergory.

Well done Milsom Hotels for picking up the tourism award and also Acorn House, a former Caterer Green Month star, for nabbing the environment award (independent).

The CBI's Richard Lambert was certainly straight-talking in his views of what the Government should and shouldn't be doing to aid the hospitality industry as we move into potentially tougher economic times. BHA chief executive Bob Cotton's comments on food inflation are well worth reading also.

Don't forget our dedicated food inflation page on the website. Its chock-full of the latest news, features and reports on rising food costs, including tips on how to mitigate the punishing price rises caterers have seen recently.

A few bleary eyes in the Caterer office this morning, the day after the Cateys.

This year's Cateys night marked a milestone for the industry¹s most prestigious awards, with the British hospitality industry gathering in London for the 25th time to recognise and celebrate its highest achievers.

In the generation that has gone by since the first Cateys in 1984, the UK hospitality, leisure and tourism industry has been transformed almost beyond recognition and now delivers an unprecedented range of products and services, to ever higher quality standards, and in all parts of our life ­ airport, department store, office, garden centre, hospital, oilrig, university campus.

Last night's dinner was a celebration of where the industry is going, but also of where it has come from. Today's operators build their business success on the solid foundations established by those who came before them, and the make-up of our audience reflected this, with today's hotshots rubbing shoulders with industry heavyweights such as Richard Shepherd, Ramón Pajares, Roy Ackerman, Bob Cotton, and Silver Catey winners Michel and Albert Roux.

The lifetime of the Cateys hasn¹t been without its problems. The recession of the early 1990s, foot-and-mouth, floods, 9/11 and the 2005 London bombings have all taken their toll. But it takes a lot to knock this industry to the canvas. Whenever it has faced a crisis, it has drawn on its reserves of strength and got back up to fight another day.

In the coming months, as food inflation drives up prices and squeezes margins, and the credit crunch forces consumers to reassess out-of-home spend, the industry will once again need to display courage, vision and a steady nerve. I have no doubt it will rise to this latest challenge ­ because it is full of exactly the sorts of people the Cateys were created to recognise.

In difficult times, we need exemplars we can draw inspiration from, people who embody standards today others can aspire to tomorrow. And that¹s where the Cateys come in. Our awards recognise and applaud exceptional individuals, companies and organisations from every sector of the industry.

See Caterersearch for a full list of winners