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Gillian Thomson, head of operations at Gordon Ramsay Holdings (GRH), is leaving the multi-Michelin-starred restaurant group, Kitchen Rat has learnt.

Scottish-born Thomson will leave GRH at the end of this month after eight years with the company.

Gillian Thomson joined GRH at its humble beginnings and has helped grow the company from two restaurants, employing 70 staff, to a global business with 23 restaurants on four continents.

After graduating with a hotel and hospitality management degree from the Scottish Hotel School at Strathclyde University, Thomson worked for what is now Millennium Hotels & Resorts, initially at the company's Glasgow hotel as assistant food and beverage manager.

She then transferred to the group's London hotel in Knightsbridge as food and beverage manager, before becoming operations manager at the Millennium Bailey's hotel. She joined GRH in 2001.

Good to see that Caterer's top tips, as written by Tom Vaughan, for combating the recession caught the imagination of a reading public keen to have some light-heartedness injected into the gloom of an ever-downward headed economy, see below. We may not intend them for actual use, but they hopefully brought a smile to some.

Cyrus Todiwala was among the speakers at a Caterer round table debate on Scores on the Doors sponsored by P&G Professional and Fairy Expert - and you can read about it in the magazine this week.

The chef proprietor of London's Cafe Spice Namaste Indian restaurant was vociferous in his condemnation of the new programme proposed by the Food Standards Agency for highlighting cleanliness in the UK's hospitality outlets.

"How do you tell people what these stars mean?" asked Todiwala. "I went to a restaurant on Brick Lane once and a rat came into the kitchen. The chef's attitude was: 'It's not my rat, it came from next door.' It's the kitchens that feed the bulk of this country at 3am that we should worry about."

Nick Bish, chief executive of the Association of Licensed Multiple Retailers, criticised the six-tier nature of the scheme, with more stars awarded the cleaner a property is deemed to be. "If I get on a plane, I expect it to be safe. I don't want to see some score suggesting how likely it is to crash."

James Arnold, UK business leader (sales and marketing) for P&G Professional added: "Only a tiny percentage will have interest in what the stars mean. If this is to educate the industry about what they should be doing in an ideal world then fine, but the public just want a red flag or a green flag, not three stars or five stars - they won't understand what they mean."

FSA defends Scores on the Doors decision >>

Six-tier Scores on the Doors plan labelled ridiculous >>

Wozza's having a tough time of it, as any of you who've been reading the papers or switched on the news will know. Last week he and his wife toured the six restaurants in his group to tell 65 of his 105 staff that they would be losing their jobs as his company had bust.

The administrator that was winding up his firm was supposed to do it, but he was stuck in snow. At least the fact AWT did the deed meant it was "more gentle" for his staff, albeit the same outcome ensued.

A few staff will remain, due to the fact that Worrall Thompson has bought back two of his restaurants he tells the Evening Standard: the Kew and Windsor grills. The Lamb Inn and the Greyhound, both in Henley-on-Thames, the Notting Grill and the Barnes Grill are those locking their doors for good.

Worrall Thompson owes Lloyds Bank around £250,000, and suppliers and loans make up another £200,000, but he was working towards paying it off, if only the banks had listened to him.

"This is a recession that didn't need to happen," he says. "It's a recession created by greed. Why isn't there rioting in the streets?"

Antony Worrall Thompson forced to close restaurants >>

Credit crunch forces Antony Worrall Thompson to close the Greyhound >>

Oh dear (or och aye as the Rat is led to believe our learned friends in Scotland are prone to utter).

Poor old Richard Bath, the food critic at the Scotland on Sunday newspaper, has got himself into a bit of a muddle with his latest review, of the Malmaison in Leith, Edinburgh.

"With the possible exception of the twee little Berkshire village of Bray, where Heston Blumenthal and Raymond Blanc jostle for elbow-room next to the Thames, nowhere outside of London has as great a concentration of restaurants as Leith," the piece begins.

Now, correct us if we're wrong, but Raymond hasn't got a presence down in Bray, although the Roux family runs the Waterside Inn down there. These French chefs eh? All the same...

Bath then goes on to complain that "there seemed to be no woodcock" in his companion's Truffled Scotch Woodcock.

More eminent foodies that the Rat have got in touch to point out that Scotch Woodcock is in fact soft scrambled Eggs on toasted brioche with anchovies, truffle and capers.

Back to school Richard...

Gordon Ramsay is back on TV screens with Kitchen Nightmares tomorrow, but it's a version of the programme with a difference.

For a start, the programme runs over two hours, a bonus for those of you that like seeing people being told off. The top chef looks at two restaurants in that time, a struggling venue in Sheffield and one in Devon.

All seems to be proceeding as normal, when after a few disagreements, the proprietors of each venue take his advice on board. However, then the economic downturn kicks in and both restaurants owners and Gordon have to engage in a significant rethink during filming.

Watch Channel 4 tomorrow at 9pm to see how Gordon is taking on the credit crunch. And you can catch Gordon too in a new book out in March and filming for more Nightmares in LA - he's on a real publicity blitz in the New Year.

Ramsay Nightmare restaurant Love's Fish closes >>

Gordon Ramsay Kitchen Nightmares restaurant badly damaged >>

A new kind of memorabilia has been created to surround the furore of Saturday night's X Factor grand finale on ITV - pizzas branded with the judges' faces.

Neopolitan pizza chain Rossopomodoro has created four pizzas costing £9 each that are embellished with the grinning faces of Simon Cowell, Louis Walsh, Danni Minogue and Cheryl Cole.

Rossopomodoro's managing director Simone Falco says: "I absolutely love the X Factor, so my tribute to the programme was to task the team at Rossopomodoro to make the pizzas - I think the resemblance to the judges is uncanny!"

Since the finalists were announced on Saturday, Simone has been selling pizzas named after the three X Factor finalists:

Eoghan Quigg - Corbarella
Mozzarella, mushrooms, ham, cream and fresh basil
A green, white and gold pizza of stunning simplicity

Alexandra Burke - Massese
Tomato, mozzarella, spicy salami and fresh basil
The spiciest pizza on the menu, full of guts and fire

JLS - Teanese
Four traditional Neapolitan cheeses; provola, caciocavallo, mozzarella and Bagnoli Pecorino

No doubt fans are chomping right into the cheesy treats in eager anticipation of Saturday's showdown. Personally, I'm amazed the team at Rossopomodoro managed to find a pizza base large enough to contain Simon Cowell's head...

aAim goes into adminstration>>

X Factor>>

The secret inspiration behind Swiss Toni?>>

Tech-focused restaurant Inamo in London's Soho has had to say good bye to its head chef, Kitchen Rat has learnt.

Anthony Sousa Tam, who previously worked at Nobu and Hakkasan, has left the pan-Asian restaurant because "things didn't work out" between him and proprietors Danny Potter and Noel Hunwick.

While it is unclear where he is off to next, he's definitely one to watch. After all when he was head chef at Atami the Evening Standard's Fay Maschler described his menu as "better than that at Nobu and Zuma".

Inamo is currently in discussions with a possible replacement, Kitchen Rat is told. At the core of the Inamo concept is an interactive ordering system that allows diners to order their meal from an illustrated menu projected onto a touch sensitive screen on their table.

Industry deals continue despite credit crunch>>

London has long been a bolthole for refugees of all different nationalities, but Kitchen Rat can report the discovery of a new variety - the Chelsea Refugee.

Seen pictured here, they are hurting financially from the credit crunch and consequent troubles in the city, combined with the prospect of recession, depression (both mental and economic) and most importantly, smaller bonuses.

It seems, however, this group has already started to cut its cloth according to its width.

Upmarket brasseries are seeing an increasing amount of these Chelsea gastronomes trading down from their traditional Michelin-starred haunts to humbler eateries.

However it appears that these chaps, while trading down on venue, refuse to compromise on quality, so much so, that one mid-market restaurant has actually had to increase the size of its top end wine list to cope with demand.

If one can't afford a Chateau d'Yquem at Ramsay's on Royal Hospital Road, perhaps a nice steak and a bottle of plonky Chateauneuf du Pape at Sophie's on the Fulham Road will have to suffice instead.  It's tough at the top eh?