in brief

conservatory ticket

Millennium Eve revellers at London's Lanesborough hotel will pay £2,000 a head to attend its planned Conservatory party - plus £100 per child for baby-sitting services. A second, speakeasy-style Prohibition party will cost £800 per person.

Pepper picked

The Red Pepper Group will open its fifth restaurant, the 50-seat Black Truffle, in Chalcot Road, north-west London, at the end of June. Under head chef Michele Franzolin, who has worked at Zafferano and Spiga, it will serve light Provenáal and northern Italian dishes.

Great Expectations

The Great House hotel in Bridgend, Mid Glamorgan, is one of several catering premises whose businesses will come under a trouble-shooter's microscope for a Channel 4 documentary. The series, provisionally titled Recipe for Success, will be screened over six weeks from October.

Oriental number nine

The Oriental Restaurant Group plans to open its ninth branch, the 250-seat Wharf Oriental in Canary Wharf, by the end of 1999. Customers are expected to spend an average £15 each in the ground floor bar/brasserie and £30 each in the mezzanine fine-dining restaurant. Fit-out costs will be £1m.

Being boiled

Pressure group the Shellfish Network has submitted a 7,000-name petition urging the Government to ban the boiling alive of crustaceans while still conscious. It wants them stunned first.