Letters

to professional youth - a toast

I support the case made by Joseph Beck in his letter "Is age really that important?" (Caterer, 19 August, page 20).

As secretary of the Guild of Professional Toastmasters, I work in many venues and with many banqueting managers. Recently, I had the pleasure to work with a very young trainee banqueting manager at a golf club in Essex.

This young man ran a 100-cover banquet superbly, with the expertise of someone twice his age. With the client, he was attentive without being intrusive; with his own staff he was directional without being bossy; and with me he was co-operative and supportive.

To him I say well done, keep up the good work. It is of this stuff that the future of the hospitality industry is made. All credit also to his seniors, whose guidance has obviously been second to none.

Bob Grosse

Secretary

Guild of Professional Toastmasters,

London SE3.

should i pay or should i fight?

I like to regard myself as a good employer in this industry. I'm an independent hotelier, so have no back-up resource to a personnel department, or as they are now grandly called, human resources, and my training in this area is common sense and an understanding of fair play.

I expect a good deal from my staff, but like to think that I give a good deal.

We independents don't hire, fire and re-hire in the cavalier way that the big chains do, downsizing at a whim to maintain this month's trading figures, regarding staff as a cost rather than an asset. When I read in Caterer of a big chain being sued or taken to an industrial tribunal for treating staff badly, I think, too bloody right.

So imagine my surprise when an ex-member of staff who was a staggering disaster from day one and whom I had to sack to preserve my business wrote to me saying he was minded to go to an industrial tribunal for unfair dismissal through his ill-health (sic: alcoholism) and that I, as an employer, had failed him.

There was a sub-text to the letter that said if I gave him some settlement money he would go away quietly.

Silly threats from silly people don't bother me, but what does concern me is that the last sentence of the letter said that he had talked to a solicitor who was willing to take up the case.

My ex-member of staff has no money and my guess is that he has found a firm of solicitors who work on the no-win, no-fee basis that has crossed the Atlantic in the past couple of years.

If I contest this nonsense, I will spend a huge amount of time that I have not got, get unwelcome publicity and have a huge legal bill. It is a sad state of affairs, but unless someone suggests something better, I am inclined to offer a thoroughly undeserved month's salary to end this ghastly matter.

NAME AND ADDRESS WITHHELD

can providers be more positive?

FURTHER to Geoffrey Bond's letter (Caterer, 29 July, page 18) on the proliferation of "training providers" in the industry, I would like to point out that there are a number of companies that are now getting much more involved in the industry, trying to put right what is wrong, instead of just criticising or assessing. Service Matters is one of them.

Many hospitality bodies are quite happy to inspect hotels and restaurants and tell them where they are going wrong, but there are very few experts in the industry who are prepared to go and help people put things right.

Ours is very much a hands-on organisation and has been fortunate enough to do business with a number of high-profile hotels and groups. Long may it continue.

Sally Matthews

Manager,

Service Matters,

Crewkerne,

Somerset.

Can we have wine with food reviews?

WHY IS it that restaurant reviewers regale us with purple prose on ambience and atmosphere but invariably lack anything other than the most cursory comment on wine?

It is true that we eat with our eyes and that the decor of a room and the design of the plate are - to some people - as important to gastronomic pleasure as the actual taste of the dish. But should not equal billing be given to wine?

Anglo-Saxon hedonism seems to fall short of Bacchanalian pleasure. We must be entertained by fulsome descriptions of the restaurant, its attentive or inattentive staff, the simplicity or complexity of the bill of fare, the precise positioning on the plate of the almost obligatory lemon grass or air-dried tomatoes; but as for wine, hardly a word.

Is it because our restaurant reviewers are teetotal, or perhaps woefully ignorant of wine? Or could it just be that because papers and magazines contain separate wine columns there is some divine editorial dictate that states the two should never meet?

There is a general agreement among fellow wine writers that while tastings are useful, the real pleasure of wine can only be achieved when accompanying food. You have only to watch a group of us at table with lines of half-full bottles to appreciate how seriously we apply ourselves to our calling.

Other than a very occasional mention of a quite inadequate, and most probably extremely inexpensive, bottle of Côte du Rhône or New World Chardonnay, there is hardly a mention of wine.

Can restaurant reviewers, who are paid considerably more than us mere wine writers, not afford a more fitting accompaniment to their meal? Have they never considered the anticipatory thrill that can be added to the perusal of the menu by a glass of chilled Champagne?

Has the thought never crossed their sophisticated minds of ordering a half of something white to be followed by a half of red and concluding with a small glass of dessert wine with their cheese and dessert?

After all, the sure sign of a restaurant of quality is that it serves decent wines by the glass and offers a good selection of half-bottles.

It is high time that feature editors gave a little more thought to their readers' interests and insist that restaurant reviews contain a proper look at wine. They might even, from time to time, invite some wine writers to contribute a more balanced gastronomic overview.

Philippe Boucheron

Droitwich,

Worcestershire.