The biggest news for restaurants this week was the confirmation that from October 2009, restaurants will be banned from using tips or cover charges to bulk up their waiting staff’s salaries to minimum-wage levels. Instead, all waiters will be paid a proper wage. Does this mean that Londoners will now get waiting staff who as a result of being paid a respectable wage, value their work in the way that the French do? Or does it move us further away from the American model where we know the staff are relying on tips for their wages and so are fully incentivised to actually provide, you know, service? You can talk about this on our forums here.
Lets put the show on right here!
It seems as if having to sit through one particularly tedious restaurant awards ceremony was one too many for critic Fay Maschler, who has teamed up with broadcaster Simon Davis to launch the London Restaurant Festival. According to Maschler, the intention is to summon up all the pizzazz that surrounds something like London Fashion Week and sprinkle it liberally over the city’s restaurant scene creating ‘a city-wide joyful and beneficial celebration of the restaurant business.’ The week to put in your diary is 8-13th October and the party to which you should do your utmost to score an invite is the opening gala on the 7that Quaglinos and sponsored by Vanity Fair. For more information, go to the London Restaurant Festival site.
Other meaty morsels we rootled out this week:
- ‘Self-appointed guards of the nation’s welfare’ who write snippy letters to the Guardian food page about the fat content of recipes get right up Yotam Ottolenghi’s nose
- How to really irritate non-foodies friends whilst retaining your own sense of sensory superiority - subject them to a perfect palate test courtesy of Raymond Blanc.
- The best way to fight off Swine Flu short of becoming a hermit is to eat flu-busting fungi
- Tourists really don’t rate the London restaurant scene....at all. We fare worse than Moscow, for Christssake!
