Gary Marshall

i don't have any bad experience of these type of systems but i feel the person that benefits most from them is the card issuer not the punter or the restaurant. you've got to be pretty organised generally to make the most of the offers. having been on the end of a hi life pitch many moons ago they offer the earth to the restaurants to allow the card, but i was always against giving our food away on promotion especially the newspaper offers etc as you just tend to attract bargain hunters, they rarely come back and pay full price so you end up a busy fool. If you want some cheap high st meals (including the likes of pizzaexpress and GBK) then sign up at www.vouchercodes.co.uk they send a weekly email of offers, i don' t think i've seen a single person paying full price in pizzaexpress recently, everyone seems to have a voucher!

well i wouldn't have reduced my prices by 2.5% and i wouldn't expect others to do so, we printed menus daily but re-programming the till was a pain in the arse. margins are tight enough so it would be a small relief. 2.5% might not sound much but on average a restaurant makes a 10% net profit, so it is actually worth having. As food1 says much of what a restaurant buys is zero rated for vat so you end up essentially paying 17.5% (or 15%) of your entire turnover to the vat man, which is quite a substantial amount. - and why you should be even more suspicious of cheap food offers when nearly 20% of it is heading straight to the tax man, how little is actually being spent on the ingredients?

i think you'd regret being that close to the sportsman and not going.

and if released on time next week they wouldn't have been news?

i'm suprised you care tim, given your recent post on word of mouth, haven't you got anything better to do than hang out on 'irritatingly pointless' threads? 'If you spend much time hanging around on the food boards it can't have escaped your notice that the new Great Britain and Ireland Michelin Guide comes out next week. This is not because of any great publicity effort on the part of the company itself, more because of the intense buzz of amateur speculation. As you'd expect, chefs are interested in Michelin's judgements - it's the way the industry judges itself - but they're way too busy to post. Otherwise the kind of people who speculate most ferociously about the stars are an odd bunch - culinary otaku with the money to spend 'collecting' starred restaurants who've extrapolated an ability-to-afford into a notion of connoisseurship. Reading their postings is like listening to that talk radio station that always seems to be playing when I get in a cab, usually on the subject of football or immigration: intense, opinionated debate of events over which the participants can have no possible influence and, to any audience, irritatingly pointless.'

and surely someone is in for an enormous bollocking, it can't have been the intended time to release the results surely? no one appears to have had 'the call' from michelin.

well done Matt & Marc, it appears there's some very shellshocked chefs out there not expecting this news on a quiet saturday afternoon!

sentimental attachment, and old germain dishes on the menu, i'll give them a chance. old and dated in it's place is fine by me, and like anthony's just because michelin haven't rated it doesn't mean it's not cooking to their standards, with germain going and robbie going there has to be continuity issues in their eyes so until there's some stability at the helm they could be 3* standard and it might not sway them. it's licensed so i doubt enjoyment will be an issue. I really have no idea what to expect but i'd be suprised if it's as bad as some of the reports. eta:though i'm deffo not paying a £20 supplement for cooked breakfast the next day!

well guess what, i've booked a table. a combination of a free room offer (as long as you have either the tasting menu and wines to match or spend the same amount ALC+drinks) and the menu seemingly featuring a lot of germain style dishes pushed us over the edge, going with some friends one of whom used to work there so hopefully it will be a good night, i'm looking forward to it.

Another red chilli trip last night, beijing dumplings and guotie (sp) to start then lamb broth, french beans and garlic/chilli, a guong something chicken (with chilli and peanuts) and a crispy fillet steak with yes, chilli, rice and spring onion bread. the lamb broth was slighlty more manageable than last time, the beef a bit like beef in ok sauce with a batter and the chicken a bit like hoi sin sauce, the winner all agreed was the beans, by far. so now i need some new dishes, i've no idea about chinese and don't fancy the offally bits, had a mild shock last night when a plate of what looked like a gelatinous sliced terrine appeared, couldn't think what it could be and it appeared to be nothing we'd ordered it was crunchy pigs ears and swiflty taken away. so any further recs appreciated, i don't know if they have different menus in the branches but i couldn't see the bean dish but with garlic shoots as described upthread or the smashed cucumber but i might have been looking in the wrong place and the dish descriptions aren't exactly verbose are they! ps the discretionary charge has now gone.

you need to go to the sportsman. if you like spring there is also le timbre, run by an ex-pat manc tucked away on a backstreet with a tiny kitchen and 1 waitress to serve.

i think i know where food 1 is coming from with regards to astrance but to describe it as 'take it or leave it ' is misleading, from memory it offers 2 or 3 tasting menus at differing price points but they are menu suprise? service is certainly 3* and it may not be gilded to within an inch of its life like many parisian 3* but it's still obviously a luxury restaurant.

board favourite? Juniper was the worst 1* meal i've ever had (before they decided to sell up too)

yes, the scoring system.

sounds good

oddly i was having a chat about the dev on friday night and i had no idea that wignall's food was that modern, i thought he was classic french but apparently not.

yes the hamborough looks likely given chef's past

i think andy is quite a harsh rater of places, we were part of a group lunch at the sportsman recently and his overall score seemed harsh considering how much he seemed to like it at the time (to be fair he does cover this in his review)

well good on james and kate for putting on everyone's favourite food - free my local always does a free drink on xmas day , the people that crawl out of the woodwork....

they're not expecting a star if that's what you're refering to, so there'll be little disappointment but quite happy to have one i'm sure. all i'm interested in is what they serve me, if it has a star that won't change what i get to eat, tony seemed invigorated and full of ideas for anthony's so i'm looking forward to the new menu.

A truely excellent dinner at anthony's last night, the demands of their new venture the piazza are certainly not being felt at the mothership, tony and olga both in, and on good form, and god knows where they get the energy from but after doing a full service they were heading back to the piazza to make more stock for the pattiserie at the piazza! there were several standouts seared tuna on ox tongue with horseradish, a perfectly cooked red mullet with filo crab sandwich and a great apple dessert with pork fil and sage ice cream, though the menu is changing from tuesday so it'll be all new. the attention to detail remains the same, for example they've invested in a new coffee machine (about the same cost as a small car) had their own coffee ground and then subjected it to a half degree at a time test to find the optimum temperature for the espresso, and it makes a fabulous coffee with excellent crema. tony has plenty up his sleeve for anthonys in 09 the piazza has not diminished his love of creating new ideas for anthony's , it'll be an interesting year.

a mate of mine had a late lunch yesterday and had the cod cassoulet, he said it was a one star dish in all respects, and given that he's won a star himself, that's not faint praise.

well as i say it's nothing to do with what's on the plate, i think most would agree they've had that pretty much boxed off from day one, but what experienced michelin hands tell me is they are a conservative, risk averse bunch, so a young chef turns up in leeds , no uk track record (despite massive * experience in spain) , own restaurant, molecular gastronomy, (for want of a better word) not classic michelin french food- well you could take the view that they wouldn't see the year out and it would be an embarrassment to michelin if they awarded a star and it fails? Subsequent years go by and now they think he has too many restaurants , spreading too thinly etc. and piazza probably won't help, so i don't think they are more likely to get one this year but the longer they stick at it the more likely it becomes, i remember it took l'enclume longer than eveyone thought to get theirs too, wheras an old michelin hand like simon gueller can re-appear at the box tree in a michelin codified environment with all the bells and whistles and because he had a star before he gets another, because if they gave one before and it's the same food why shouldn't it get one again? As an aside the guellers said when they got theirs unexpectedly and anthony's didn't when everyone thought they would, it actually casued them a bit of a backlash, it was a bit harsh as i was at the box tree the night before the results and they had no idea they were getting one, they thought they'd be luckily to have caught the deadline for a few knives and forks, as i said michelin move in mysterious ways!

I have had similar experiences , or they have been place like anthony's or fraiche that to my mind are 1* all day long but just don't tick the michelin box, (and i can see the michelin POV on some of this eg young businesses/young chefs/lack of track record etc) but it's nothing to do with their stated ethos of 'it's only what's on the plate that counts' Althought they chuck a curve ball in every now again with (the very much deserved) star at the sportsman or giving heston 3* most places, to the seasoned diner, look like 1 , 2 or 3 star restaurants and they stick to that formula because that's what diners who use the guide expect, stick anthony's or fraiche in a country house hotel in surrey and i'm sure they'd get a star. Anyway going to anthony's tonight, and from my recent visit to fraiche, although to my mind a solid 1* they didn't appear to be holding their breath for one. that said, generally the restaurants they do rate are worthy of it, it's more the omissions that are sometimes baffling but that's all part of the mystique. fwiw i think nathan is the only uplift to 2* likely and would be suprised if gordon lost a star or wareing picked up one, murano will probably get one though. juniper a cert to lose it, and what's his other place in cornwall - that too probably.

whilst D E-M is cooking, LCS will keep its 2*. Michelin rarely downgrade somewhere like that unless there's some serious change in staffing or complete change of cuisine ie they change it to a brasserie.