Chef Jason Atherton pictured at The Biltmore Hotel, London
(Picture: Daniel Hambury/@stellapicsltd)Dear London… When I arrived in 1988 your food scene was in a pretty dire state. There were of course food titans like Marco Pierre White, Simon Hopkinson and Terence Conran, but we always lagged behind our counterparts in Europe and beyond. We were a bit of a laughing stock culinary wise, only known for over cooked beef and fish and chips.
Yet over the decades young energetic chefs, mâitre d’s, sommeliers and bartenders worked to learn the craft of hospitality from giants and gave us an enviable reputation as one of the best cities in the world to eat out. Suddenly, London was thriving.
But now, almost just as suddenly, things are changed. If we don’t make the right choices, the very industry to which you all turn to make your memories could simply disappear in front of your eyes.
Think about after work: where do you go for a quick gossip with friends? A quick pint in a beautiful old British pub? Grab a takeaway on one of the new creative fast-food joints? Save up to eat in a refined new chef’s take on fine dining? The choice is endless.
People see a packed restaurant or bistro or bar and think, my goodness, they must be making a fortune. I can certainly tell you they are not — margins are tight and getting even tighter. What needs to change is that we need to be more together as a city on what we are trying to achieve.
There are several things that have caused our industry to go into decline. The recent rail strikes during the busiest month of the year were simply cruel to our industry and, post-Covid, felt like a real punch in the stomach. Of course the Government needs to settle these disputes as soon as possible, but meanwhile we are left in our depleted businesses hoping it will all go away and that we can get on with the post-pandemic rebuild. That in itself has been so hard for our industry, causing mental health issues and also meaning people lose perfectly good businesses through no fault of their own.
We now face fast-rising costs, no staff, rail strikes and a government that seems to want to empty the streets of London at 9pm.
I remember a time when we had Night Tubes and a TfL that worked seamlessly. Our teams could get home safely at any hour which let us take customers at 11pm so they could eat and dance the night away.
Now we shut early to enable our teams to get the last Tubes home, which of course is the responsible thing to do. People work from home on Mondays and Fridays, which has reduced lunches in restaurants to Tuesday to Thursday, and energy costs are sky-high.
What gives me hope is our industry is full of bright, positive people who work like Trojans to give you, the people of this wonderful city, the best experience. But I ask you one thing: be kind, smile at the young person striving to serve you. They really do love what they do.
The fee for this article is going to Hospitality Action, which helps people who have fallen on hard times during Covid.
The Menu fails to enlighten me
I got home from working a service at Pollen Street Social, where we successfully served 54 guests — fully booked on a Wednesday night. Watching my team work was like watching a ballet — quite amazing. At home I indulged, with my wife Irha, in a post-service cup of English tea — not rock’n’roll I know. We put on the movie The Menu, starring Anya Taylor-Joy, left. I get excited, like the guests in the movie, when hearing about a restaurant in a far away land where the chef is considered a culinary genius. I have made many a pilgrimage to such places. I am of course still alive to tell the tale thank goodness and no chef wanted to kill us. One day, though, I look forward to a movie that’s more uplifting. Hospitality is one of the greatest things in the world and doesn’t need a very expensive education — just a dedicated and hard-working mindset and the world (excuse the pun) is your oyster.
