August 2009 Archives

This week's Restaurant of the Week is Lutyens, the latest venture from veteran London restaurateur Sir Terence Conran.

David Burke, head chef at Lutyens, the latest restaurant project from Terence and Vicki Conran in partnership with Peter Prescott, has constructed a menu on foundations of simplicity.

Burke and Conran go back a long way. When the Irish chef's three-year stint at Bibendum ended in 1990, he went on to open Le Pont de la Tour, where he stayed for 10 years. This latest collaboration came about because Conran felt the City was crying out for a decent grill room.

Lutyens restaurant honours British architect Sir Edwin Lutyens, who designed the grandiose former Reuters press agency building on Fleet Street in which it is housed. It comprises a 130-seat restaurant, a 50-cover bar, a members' club and four private dining rooms. The food offering includes breakfast, rôtisserie, crustacea bar, charcuterie counter and à la carte, with a modest sushi offering in the pipeline.

Good news for Heston Blumenthal and Gordon Ramsay: according to the latest edition of the Good Food Guide the celebrity chefs are still at the top of their game when it comes to restaurants.

The restaurant bible has named Heston Blumenthal's three-Michelin-starred Fat Duck in Bray, Berkshire, the best restaurant in Britain awarding it a perfect score of ten out of ten for the second year in a row.

Gordon Ramsay's flagship three-Michelin-starred restaurant on London's Royal Hospital Road in Chelsea scored nine out of ten making it the second most popular UK restaurant in the Good Food Guide 2010.

The awards will no doubt have some critics up in arms.

The Good Food Guide 2010 is published on 8 September priced £16.99.

David Moore, owner of the Michelin-starred Pied à Terre and L'Autre Pied restaurants in London, is looking to expand.

While it's still early days and nothing's been finalised Moore has confirmed he is on the look out for new sites.

"We're looking for opportunities in the current market but it's too early to say more than that," he says.

He has appointed property agents Restaurant Property to assist him in his search.

Earlier this year, Moore backed a new venture in Harrogate, north Yorkshire from Tom van Zeller, a former chef at the two Michelin-starred Pied à Terre.

He has also been the resident front-of-house expert on Raymond Blanc's BBC2 series The Restaurant, which will return to our screens next month.

It's August and that means it's quiet on the gossip and news front as everyone's chilling out on holiday sipping on pina coladas.

But here's a sweet little story I thought you might like, about a man from Wales who decided to fess up about an unpaid restaurant bill for a £10 curry. Only problem was it took him more than a decade to come clean.

The man confessed to police in Swansea that he had walked out of a restaurant without paying 13 years ago and included three £20 notes in his confession letter asking officers to pass them on.

While he remembered the location of the restaurant he couldn't remember its name but police officers came to the rescue and managed to track down the Seaview Tandoori.

However, the proprietor had since moved away and police spent nearly five months trying to track him down. They put out an appeal to find the owner of the restaurant, which had been demolished a number of years ago to make way for flats.

When they finally managed to find Samsul Bari he said he was happy but slightly bewildered about the late payment. "I really appreciate his honesty," he told the BBC.

"But I was quite surprised because 13 years is quite long time ago for someone to realise they have made a mistake and done the wrong thing."

Well, better late than never.

French chef Daniel Galmiche is set to join the award-winning Vineyard at Stockcross in Berkshire as executive chef and head of food and beverage.

The move follows the departure of the two-Michelin-starred chef John Campbell, who is leaving the Vineyard to join the Dorchester Collection's new country house estate and spa, Coworth Park.

Galmiche, who will take up his new role on 1 October, is leaving his role of executive chef at the five-star Forbury hotel in Reading, which earlier this year collapsed into administration. He joined the 24-bedroom property last autumn and has been overseeing its Cerise and Eden restaurants.

Galmiche was formerly executive head chef at Cliveden, also in Berkshire, where he gained a Michelin star at Waldo's restaurant in 2006. Prior to this he held Michelin stars at Harvey's in Bristol and at L'Ortolan near Reading.

This week's Restaurant of the Week is the Criterion on London's Piccadilly.

First opened in 1874 as the Long Bar or Marble Hall, the Criterion is a Grade II-listed building that forms part of the 120,000 sq ft Criterion Theatre block, which is owned by the Crown Estate. Its spectacular interiors include marbled floors and mirrored walls set below a magnificent neo-Byzantine golden mosaic ceiling.

Marco Pierre White acquired the restaurant from Forte in 2001, when it was managed by My Kinda Town, successfully returning it to its former glory, but his love for the Criterion seemed to have waned over the years.

In February this year, the restaurant was given a new lease of life after it was taken over by Irakly Sopromadze of the Vox Restaurant company, a 21-year-old entrepreneur from the former USSR state of Georgia. He acquired the Criterion as the first of a number of planned investments in the capital, "gently restoring" its interiors and bringing in new head chef Matthew Foxon.

 South African Foxon joined from acclaimed south London gastropub the Rosendale where he had been head chef for 18 months. He says he considers the opportunity to bring back the Criterion "like phoenix from the ashes" as a great honour.

A set menu, priced £18 for two-, and £23 for three course, is available at lunch time as well as pre- and post-theatre and offers a choice of around five starters, mains and desserts. The à la carte meanwhile is divided into sections: soups, crustaceans, starters, main courses, grills, pasta, egg dishes, and desserts as well as a sushi and sashimi section to cater for the restaurant's Russian clientele.

Celebrity chef Paul Merrett, co-owner and head chef of the Victoria gastropub in Sheen, south west London, stars in a new TV series called Economy Gastronomy.

The show, which also stars Leon co-founder Allegra McEvedy, launches on BBC2 tonight.

Paul, who previously headed the kitchens of the Michelin-starred Greenhouse in Mayfair as well as the Farm in Fulham, says the show is all about cooking great food without spending a fortune.

"The backdrop is that our nation's skills of house keeping and managing a budget seem to have gone awry and people spend way too much money on food," he explains.

"The show aims to show them how to slash their food bills and eat well at the same time."

Each episode of Economy Gastronomy features a member of the public who spends way too much money on food. They're given the Paul/Allegra treatment and are educated about how to plan and budget their weekly food shop.

Paul says: "Any chef knows that you need to set out a plan for the week - list exactly the meals you will be cooking and what ingredients you will need and buy them as unprepped as possible to save money. Consumers don't know this and waste an awful lot of food."

For a full interview with Paul Merrett, see Caterer's Minute on the Clock column.

It's the next chapter in the never ending saga that is the fallout between Gordon Ramsay and erstwhile protégé Marcus Wareing.

The former best mates famously fell out last summer when Wareing left Gordon Ramsay Holdings to run the Petrus restaurant at the Berkeley Hotel as his own.

Afterwards Wareing spoke out about the rift with Ramsay saying he would rather kill himself than work with the "sad bastard" again. "If I never speak to that guy again for the rest of my life, it wouldn't bother me one bit. I wouldn't give a f***," he raged then.

But it seems Wareing's had a change of heart and in his most recent interview the chef-patron of his eponymous two-Michelin-starred restaurant at the Berkeley, admitted that he was more to blame for the rupture than Ramsay.

He said he'd wanted to "engineer a break" that would allow him to set up on his own. "I didn't want to be in another man's world any more. I was stubborn and I dug my heels in," he told the Sunday Times.

"I picked a fight to engineer the break. I don't really think he did anything wrong -- it was just me feeling how much I wanted to be on my own."

But he admitted he felt freer now with "no political battles to fight" or anger inside, even saying he missed Ramsay's friendship. "I don't bear him any grudges. He's a fabulous character and I miss his friendship."  

With all the hardship Ramsay's had to deal with of late, I bet he could do with a friend.