Guy Ritchie may not be flavour of the month with his London neighbours complaining about late night revelrie at his boozer The Punchbowl, but being a landlord clearly agrees with him. According to reports in the Evening Standard today, he's intent on bringing his own brand of mockney drinking joint to America with plans for openings in Manhattan and Los Angeles. Ritchie's business partner Nick House told the paper: 'We want to start with a branch in New York first. It will be just like the one in Mayfair, styled like a traditional country pub with traditional pub food and real ales that we'd like to import from Britain.'
Loubet confirms his Zetter move
After the kind of heated denials you'd associate more with a Hollywood agent valiantly trying to pretend an imminent divorce/adoption/pregnancy is pure tosh, the Bruno Loubet camp are finally admitting that yes, the chef will be opening a restaurant at the Zetter hotel in Clerkenwell.
Launching in February 2010, the 85-cover Bistrot Bruno Loubet will have 'a small lounge area and will open daily for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The menus will showcase Loubet’s distinctive cooking technique of modern bistrot food'. Of course, Hot Dinners' readers are one step ahead on this story, having known since last month that Bruno's wife had been tweeting about the move.
Food critic's landmark case
A landmark Australian court case which two years ago judged that this review was defamatory has now settled in the food critic's favour. Matthew Evans' review of the now-defunct Coco Roco restaurant in Sydney memorably described the restaurant's pork belly dish thus: 'Texturally, it brings to mind the porcine equal of a parched Weetabix'. He was taken to court, and after one judge ruled that the review was fair, a second case ruled in favour of the restaurateur allowing him to sue the critic for defamation - a case that yesterday settled in favour of the critic.
Watch out for Hot Dinners' round-up of the best and worst reviews of 2009 - coming soon...
