July 2007 Archives

According to the latest restaurant blog on the net, Napkin Sniffing, (which is written by an anonymous person with a remarkably similar writing style to a recently departed editor, who left, with his head held high and his mobile number printed on his T-shirt) Mark Hix, chef director of Caprice Holdings has handed in his notice.

The rumour’s been circulating for a few weeks now but while the man himself recently slammed it as “utter crap”, it now seems it was true after all as Hix confirmed the move to the Observer’s Jay Rayner.

Hix, who has been with Caprice Holdings, the owner of The Ivy, Caprice and Scotts, among others, for 17 years, commands much love and respect in the industry. His departure will mean the loss of an invaluable asset to Caprice Holdings so much much so that the group has made him give no less than a full year’s notice.

Hix told Rayner he plans to return to his West Country roots and is in talks to buy the Riverside Restaurant in West Bay in Dorset, and also intends to set up something in London so he can divide his time between the two.

The rat wishes Mark all the best!

“Nobody goes out of their way to stay in the Dartford Travelodge,” said company boss Grant Hearn recently when pressed on the particular challenges of running a budget hotel operation.

Well Mr Hearn, I think you've got off lightly.

InterContinental has just revealed that it will be opening a Holiday Inn in that popular mini-break destination Novosibirsk, the capital of Siberia.

The 200 bedroom hotel will open in 2009 in partnership with Clover Group, and let's hope both parties have some luck with occupancy.

For those tempted to make the not so short trip to the furthest reaches of the Russian Federation you can look forward to convenient access to the Novosibirsk exhibition and conference centre.

Last week’s flooding affected hoteliers, restaurateurs and publicans in pretty dramatic ways, from having your water supply cut off to the road leading to your business becoming inaccessible through the rising tides. Thankfully a little blitz spirit has taken hold in the South-West and Midlands, with rival hoteliers ferrying each other food by dinghy and brewers shipping in water instead of beer in delivery trucks. Come on chaps, stiff upper lip and all that! Worse things have happened at sea.

Unfortunately the pressure has got to a few in the trade.

For anyone who enjoys a punt over the weekend Kitchen Rat has an insider tip - Eric the Ferret. Sadly you won't find Eric enjoying a canter round Epsom but the little fellow will be racing as fast as his little legs can carry him down a drain pipe at this weekend's ferret racing meeting at the Bovey Castle hotel in Devon.

Kitchen Rat has learnt that Eric has a name-sake - Eric Jager, the deputy general manager at the Bovey Castle. Apparently the similarity hasn't gone down well with the Austrian, particularly with the staff asking him to get his ferret out.

For those from Yorkshire (by 'eck) familiar with the sport of ferret legging the notion of getting your ferret out takes on a whole new meaning. With your ankles and your waist tied tight on your trousers there is only one place the ferret is coming out from and that is your fly....

Cigar smokers such are getting a bit of a bum deal at the moment. Previously one would retire to the drawing room after a particularly satisfying dinner with a large glass of brandy and a fine Cuban. Well the smoking ban has stopped such refined shenanigans but those fine purveyors of taste - Hotel Du Vin - had the wisdom to introduce the Cigar Shack: the smoking ban friendly post-dinner location.

"It's a bit like a log cabin, with a sliding roof, and it will be furnished with lots of oak, rugs and comfy seats," Hotel Du Vin told Caterer at the time. Sounds romantic and it appears that some 'guests' share that view and are using the shack for 'ulterior motives'.

In a rather disconcerting discovery the general managers at both the Cheltenham and Winchester hotels have found couples using the smoking shacks for 'themselves'. The shacks have now become such a notorious spot for lovers that the Cheltenham shack has been subject to a spot of vandalism - changing the Cigar Shack sign to Cigar Shag

Unintended laugh of last week's LACA conference came from posh Prue Leith, a speaker there and chairman of the School Food Trust (SFT).

Towards the end of the first morning's session a question and answer spot featuring the SFT got very heated as the school catering delegates voiced their frustrations with the prescriptive changes being made to the system and perceived lack of support.

Leith cunningly launched into an anecdote about a group of young pupils she had met in the past that had undertaken a 13-week course on how to bake biscuits.

Don’t shoot the messenger! Prue Leith and Judy Hargadon should have shouted over the din at last week’s Local Authority Caterers Association conference.

The chairman and chief executive of the School Food Trust (SFT), the body set up by the Government to put the new school food standards into practice, were given a bashing in the question and answer (Q&A) spot that closed the morning session on the first day.

Things got rather heated when delegates realised Leith’s earlier briefing essentially meant that although they will have more flexibility to spend the £240m of funding due from 2008 they won’t be getting any additional handouts from Government to ease pressure on the struggling school meals service.

With LACA’s latest figures suggesting secondary school meal uptake has dive bombed to an all-time low of 35% and that 65% of local authority catering departments are in deficient, this was not what any delegate wanted to hear.

What have the Anglo-Saxons ever done for us?

Okay, forget the roads, the sanitation and the street lighting, they're a bunch of imperious know it alls subjugating the Celts if you ask me!

Yes, no doubt meetings of the Cornish Liberation Army (CLA), where they get slowly blasted on beer from the St Ives Brewery, are in a Monty Python style, great fun.

Well fear not, budding businessmen and celebrity chefs alike, for a man has been arrested in the peculiar case: “The extremist threats against Jamie Oliver and Rick Stein”.

Kitchen Rat salutes Phil Roker the business development director at City caterer Vacherin.

If you think your day has been hard spare a thought for the insane Roker who completed - no mean feat in itself - the Frankfurt Ironman on the 1 July raising, to date, £2,000 for charities Hospitality Action and Debra.

Roker put himself through a 2.4 mile swim followed by a 112 mile bike ride and a what-the-hell-I-can-still-stand marathon (the full 26.2 miles).

Staff at the Hilton Park Lane hotel seem to have remained in the dark following the hotel’s involvement in the recent Lights Off London campaign.

The rat hears that managers at the hotel were absolutely shocked and surprised to be told by an outsider that its parent company had been sold to US private equity firm Blackstone. The buy out giant snapped up Hilton Hotels Corporation in a deal worth more than $20b (£9.9b) earlier this week.

Could it be that Hilton staff are so sick of seeing heiress Paris in the news, they’ve abandoned keeping up to date with what’s happening at Hilton?

What's in a name? Quite a bit according to Living Ventures (LV) founder Tim Bacon.

Mr Bacon has just sold the Living Room chain to Ultimate Leisure for £28m. The deal leaves him and business partner Jeremy Roberts with Est Est Est and Blackhouse Group.

It also neatly sidesteps the option shareholder The Restaurant Group (TRG) would have had in 2008 to buy LV outright.

However, although the direct relationship with Bacon and TRG has now come to a natural conclusion this hasn't registered in the minds of the great British public quite yet it would seem.

Apparently Bacon has been suffering the fate of a thousand paper cuts, receiving some 40 letters of mostly complaint a week, mostly about Est Est Est.