Extracts from Caterer's archives

The Sixties

The Automobile Association is to grade garages in the same way as hotels. Those who are granted AA recognition and grading will have to conform to a strict code of practice designed to provide members with a high standard of service and reliability.

Just as stars are used to denote different types of AA-appointed hotels, one, two, three spanners and a breakdown truck symbol will be used for garages.

Caterer, 20 June 1968

The Seventies

The Government confirmed last week that the Theft Bill - now before the Commons - will improve the law which currently enables restaurant bill "bilkers" to get away without paying.

Home Officer minister Brynmor John admitted to MPs that there was a gap in the existing law, and claimed the Bill would fill it. The new legislation includes a maximum two-year jail sentence on "bilking", and fines associated with the crime will in future be inflation-proofed.

The minister told MPs that, as the law stood, a person who had eaten a meal and formed the intention not to pay, but indicated to a waiter that he was going to make a phone call, could be guilty of an offence.

Whereas the diner who simply left the restaurant might not be guilty of committing an offence.

Caterer, 15 June 1978

The Eighties

Gordon Gorman, who shook the sensitivities of some Caterer readers by informing us that he liked to cook goat, is set to launch a campaign for modern Kenyan cuisine. Gordon, group food and beverage manager at the Jadini Beach Hotel in Mombasa, is fed up with menus in resort and city hotels in his country which reflect "a boring and outdated collection of so-called European classical dishes, which are either poorly prepared, overpriced, misspelled, or all three".

Caterer, 16 June 1988