Caterer and Hotelkeeper – 14064
l Of course, it's down to streaky bakin'
IN THIS brave new world of genetically modified organisms, one pub in Sutton, Surrey, seems to have found a supplier that is one step ahead of the game. Its menu offers "a generous portion of Leicestershire hand-raised pork pie" - no doubt nourished on free-range pigswill and self-cloning acorns. But Table Talk did wonder how the farmer kept the crusts from crumbling as the young pies engaged in a bit of youthful rough and tumble.
l It ain't how we does it in these here parts
NOT ALL Americans are business bruisers. Clarene Law, a formidable but charming hotelier who runs several hotel franchises in Jackson, Wyoming, was most upset at the Choice Hotels conference recently when she walked out of the seminar on how to do better business. "They were suggesting we steal business from our neighbours," she said, "which I found extremely offensive. We don't do that sort of thing in Jackson, and nobody would last long if they did."
l But do they still leave the loo seat up?
IF YOU thought BBC1's docu-soap about Liverpool's Adelphi hotel showed a darker side of the hospitality industry, brace yourself for the latest fly-on-the-wall TV series on the bar-restaurant in Blackpool called Funny Girls. What is funny about the girls who serve you and entertain you is that they are, in fact, men. They just happen to have stunning and alluring dress sense.
l BOLTY ("best of luck to you")
MEANWHILE, Blackpool landladies, the butt of a thousand stand-up comics' jokes (mostly in Blackpool theatres), have declared their comic image definitely off-message. The menacing, arms-folded look, strict allocation of toast slices per guest, and "be in by midnight" warnings no longer exist, they say. So the Blackpool Hotel and Guest House Association (formerly the Blackpool Boarding House Association) is renaming itself the BHGA. Initials-only rebranding has worked for organisations such as BT, BA and KFC, says the association boss, so it should sharpen up the image of Britain's biggest short-break resort. Will this modernisation also extend to the phasing out of such legendary Blackpool guesthouse names as Linga-Longa and Staymore House?
l Could we pay in florins and farthings?
A DEVON hotelier is making a passionate stand against the euro by refusing to accept payment in the new currency. Graham Booth, who owns the Torbay Motel near Paignton, insists that guests wishing to pay in euros will have to exchange them for sterling, like any other foreign currency. "It's my little personal protest," he said. Little Englanders, unite.
l How do they make trees do that?
GARDNER Merchant's sales and marketing director, Phil Hooper, tells me of an imaginative piece of advertising he discovered recently while eating out in New York. When the waiter pulled the cork from the wine and offered it to Hooper to inspect, the winery's Web site address was printed down the side of the cork.
l See no supper, hear no supper, speak…
DINERS in restaurants in northern Thailand saw food stolen from their plates last week after 1,000 hungry monkeys went on the rampage. Seems this was a result of a cash crisis at the district council, which ran out of money to buy rice for the region's population of macaques that had become dependent on the handouts.
