Happy landings

Andrew Nelder looks like winning the battle of the radicchio. Nelder is what Michael Winner might describe as a "historic" maître d'. He oversees the QE2‘s plush Princess Grill with a style and flair that his passenger-guests must sometimes find hard to live up to. The Queen's Grill may be the official top tomato of the ship's five formal and two informal restaurants, but the Princess is the first choice for foodies.

Prodigious as his knowledge of food and wine is, we managed to stump him over the sexual mores of the plant chicorium intybus (radicchio, to you). We were assured by a couple of three-Michelin-starred chefs at the height of the nouvelle cuisine revolution that the sweet radicchio is the female of the species, and the bitter-leaf version is the male. We swallowed the story along with the radicchio.

Nelder took the view that it all depends on where the plant is grown. Plausible, but further research revealed that early or late picking accounts for the flavour difference. As, of course, does the species of radicchio.

Nothing we can find confirms the male and female theory. Unless readers can come to our aid, we will owe Nelder $50 for the World Cruise Charities (a children's hospice in the UK and an orphanage for disabled children in Thailand).

Acolytes abroad
One of the rewards of running hotels is to see the young people you have helped to train become top managers themselves - often in the most unexpected of places.

Over dim sum at the Excelsior hotel in Hong Kong we met with general manager Andrew Hirst, and caught up on the 14 years since he left Claridge's.

After spells in Jakarta and Singapore as well as Hong Kong, Hirst now regards Asia as his home, thoroughly enjoying the stylish life of the imported hotelier, and has no desire to return to London's chill. The 887-bedroom Excelsior, which has nine restaurants, was enjoying a spell of 92% occupancy and earns 30% of the Mandarin Oriental hotel group's profits. "Of course, we saw a difference after last September," Hirst admitted, "but our business is predominantly from South-east Asia, and it's very much on the march again."

Trying to please the critics Top Hong Kong hotel the Peninsula was so happy with the success of the "Chef's Table" in the kitchen at Gaddi's, its number-one restaurant, that it put tables in two further outlets, Spring Moon and Felix.

Now the restaurant critic at the Asian Wall Street Journal has accused the Chef's Table of being too far from the action, too sterile and too polite. And that's with a pre-lunch tour that includes the garbage recycling system! The critic, John Krich, said: "Everything seems so organised, everyone is so polite… that half the fun goes out of it. The Chef's Table experience could benefit from a bag of spilled flour, the sound of crashing glass, and a dash of bad behaviour."

Chef Philip Sedgwick's comment is unprintable.

Paradise regained
Sheer luck and a sense of dèjà vu (I managed London's Royal Garden hotel in the 1970s) took us to the Royal Garden hotel resort in Pattaya, Thailand. It's part of the Marriott family, and our good friend Marriott vice-president Henry Davies can be proud of the flag-waving the Royal Garden is doing for the group.

QE2 passengers staying overnight in Laem Chabang were given the run of the Royal Garden's facilities. In the business centre we were plied with iced water, coffee, pastries and unbelievably exotic home-made crystalised fruit and peel - of which there are different kinds offered each day.

The outdoor pool and tropical gardens were big enough to accommodate guests from the hotel and ship with space to spare. We ate lunch at the pool bar, half-submerged in cool water while the air temperature around us was 93°F. When all that got too much like hard work, we slipped away for a Thai massage.

We were introduced to the hotel's resident manager Bjorn Richardson, a broad-shouldered young Swede with a military background, now enjoying a contrasting career in steamy Thailand. He is a hands-on manager, who believes people come before paperwork, and guests clearly delight in his company. We were grateful for that approach 24 hours later when, after another busy day around the hotel pool, we returned to the ship for sailaway at 6pm.

At 5.15pm Eve discovered she had left an irreplaceable floppy disk in the hotel's business centre. A $12-a-minute ship-to-shore phone call to Richardson provided just the kind of challenge he likes. "I'll find it and put it on a motorbike," he said immediately. Eve explained that the gangway would be lifted at 5.45pm, but Bjorn insisted he could do it, even in the Pattaya rush hour.

As 6pm approached, the QE2‘s security officer, Andy Holloway, stationed himself at the foot of the gangway and held off instructions to lift it. At 5.58pm the ship's agent ran up with an envelope grabbed from a motorcycle messenger.

Thank you, Bjorn. Thank you, Andy. Without you this article - and an assortment of business letters - would never have seen the light of day.

Geomancing the stone The Hyatt hotel in Singapore's busy Scotts Road called in a geomancer - an expert in feng shui. His prescription? Three fountains in front of the hotel and a waterfall in a miniature tropical garden at the rear. Evil spirits cannot travel through or cross water, apparently, thus helping the hotel to avoid misfortune. The company admitted: "It would have been a lot easier if we'd hired the geomancer before we briefed the architect."