Gary Marshall

terry durack rates it highly..... http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/fo...ng-1607031.html

morning thom, the york branch has been open a while now, 6 months maybe? it's now firmly on the rotation and is i think now my favourite casual dining spot, usurping akbars which i love. Even better mrs m has caught the bug and completely independently suggested that we should go on sunday afternoon going to have a good look for the shredded pork and garlic shoots and if you make it david, let me know if you undiscover any gems!

it's got a daft name 3.3.2.1 or some such, in line with the number of starters mains & desserts and god knows what else.

i thought they'd only just refurbed the original one, maybe there's going to be two? if it's a wet weekend, red chilli york may well be on my agenda.

i should never have doubted them, i thought nikki being a local might have stolen the march on them!

i don't think even dos hermanos have been. what's the schtick with the place? Is it wine oriented?

to my knowledge it has almost come from nowhere, so no "waiting to see if it survives" delay. ← err, hasn't it been in the family for a generation? hence quite stable despite change in cuisine? not quite a start up! as an aside quiqe dacosta did the same with el poblet in denia, took his father in-laws restaurant over, changed to an ultra modern cusine and promptly halved the takings in the first year, only recovering when he won a star and subsequently two.

we ran an early bird for precisely that reason, i didn't like to do it but knew if we could just get them through the door we'd keep them.

i think there is a world of difference between a good value offer eg a £10 lunch than a buy one get one half price etc offer which i do think devalues your offer. when we had the pub we were always pestered by the papers wanting to do lunch for £5 etc and we never did it, as we couldn't offer a menu at that price without serious disruption and we weren't going to give our alc away. I don't think the bargain hunters do come back either . However we didn't open midweek lunch and i reckon there is a sizable demographic there of retired/ladies who lunch/ young mothers etc and in serving them a decent priced lunch you are not cannabalising your evening trade, erica's other points about lunch also being spot on to my mind. (btw food1 i think your lunch policy eminently sensible way of running it too )

scott's of york

that's a big can of worms, depends i suppose on whether , talking generically you think a 1* meal is so rated because of the skill of the kitchen or the luxury of the ingredients used. a good kitchen can make a lot of lesser ingredients eg arbutus make about 3 dishes from 1 rabbit, ramsay used to do pork belly at RHR (and maybe stil does). for me the cut used is less important, i like the skill/imagination. I once had a confitted duck leg stuffed into a duck neck with chicken hearts and crispy chicken skin at anthony's, ingredient cost not a lot.

also closed his maze restaurant in prague. and rumoured in the trade to be the biggest debtor that caused the oldest butcher in york to go bust.

yes in an industry crazed by focus on 60 - 70% gp the idea of cash margin and bums on seats might become the new mantra. Obviously if you have decent chefs then you should be able to produce food at an attractive price point than if you're just messing about with fillets of this and that, hopefully the places that deserve to survive, doing things properly, will.

no, i read about this offer in one of the mags, they reckon it's the cheapest 1* lunch around and they've been full ever since they launched it so good for them. btw matt tomkinson who won the star for the goose has won another at the montague in beaulieu.

that presentation & menu looks very anthony's -esque.....

i'm sure heston would be delighted to get £300k for 3 programmes! i think you could knock a '0' off that to get to the ball park figure. You don't refurb high volume places like that for less than several hundreds of thousands. they just can't afford it.

still looks very much like a pr coup from little chef, which suprises me as they did come across as borderline incompetent on the tv. Given the £300k heston spent on popham, there's no way in the current environment they could roll it out in even a fraction of the estate, even if the management were in favour of it.

you have email

howden station 10 mins from my house, london in 2.20 , cheap tickets too (but then caviar is cheap compared to current east coast mainline tickets)

well i wouldn't go that far

well for what it's worth bas, if every restaurant was run as tightly as yours i think the industry would be in better shape. see you good friday

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/fo...is-1605279.html

that's why when we moved offices, i chose one as close to the motorway as possible! They change the system every few years, i have no idea how to drive to most of the town centre nowadays and i've been working in leeds for 12 years.

though an oasis of calm and civility when the other choice was our office xmas do down the road.

i was there one friday night and it was being used as a trial run ahead of it's official opening and it was definitely used new years eve as i tried to book it so i think if the demand is there it is in use, i suspect, but don't know they fill the original one first.