Regulars are the toughest critics
Lunching with the editor of the Bournemouth Evening Echo recently, our talk turned to restaurant reviews and the style of pieces found in most local weekly and daily papers.
"My companion plumped for the stuffed mushrooms and pronounced them excellent" has been around for as long as I can remember in the weekly Backwoods-under-Par Gazette.
My lunch partner agreed with me and admitted his own paper often produced such reviews. But he argued it was a fact of life as, more likely than not, restaurants being reviewed in such publications were those that had placed an advert on the page opposite.
An objective view
It was very much a hand-in-glove relationship, one which he had frequently thought could be improved but had not found how. He wondered if I might think of a way of being able to gather a group of local restaurants and hotels which would agree to being written about in a more realistic way without getting upset.
Was there a way of providing local readers with a more genuine account of a meal out? He indicated he would consider a new approach if there was one. I am still thinking about it.
The national newspapers are different as they are not so beholden to advertisers. It seems to be a 1990s thing for a regular reviewer to be noticed for an acerbic style rather than the establishment being reported on. They deliver a witty hatchet job, damning with very faint praise.
I believe the nationals realised about five years ago that reviewing a restaurant is as contentious as reviewing television, and a good way of attracting readers. In fact, one Sunday newspaper seems to use the same critic for TV as restaurants, and he is very funny. Will he one day, dare one hope, find a restaurant he actually likes?
I am glad that we have never been in any guide book or "hit" by national reviewers in our 16 years here. There are hundreds of us in businesses up and down the land who plough our individual furrows, week in week out, and ask nothing more than that our customers tell us when we get things right.
And what a customer deems right or wrong is not what a paid restaurant critic would pick up on.
Last weekend, with no special parties booked into the Walhampton Room (the new function room pictured above), we removed some of the tables we had squeezed into the bar area and put them in the Walhampton Room. This proved to be a mistake.
Bar meal regulars didn't like being away from the buzz of the bar, even though we pointed out that it allowed them to eat in greater comfort and they would not feel compelled to move on by others hovering over them, waiting to grab a table. One couple left because there was no table where their regular table used to be!
We have always offered "chance" bar meals service as well as a bookable restaurant service, but we are beginning to realise that the two services running together on a Sunday lunchtime is becoming detrimental to the table d'hote restaurant service.
During the week it's different: 99% of our business is bar meals and no one books, they just turn up.
Justin, our chef, has said he would rather serve 200 from the table d'hote than 120 from the table d'hote and 80 from a long bar menu.
It makes sense, but how do we break it to a coterie of regulars who arrive as early as 11.30am on a Sunday to get their favourite tables and who queue at the door waiting to be let in?
Of course, we shall have to make sure we can fill the place with 200 people reserving for the restaurant menu.
Linked to this is the question of what we can charge; the price of our three-course-and-coffee Sunday lunch table d'hote menu will have remained at £14.50 for two years this September. If we need to find another 200 each week, maybe the price will have to stay the same for yet another year.
The two groups we looked after in the Walhampton Room in the first week of use expressed delight in its design; one party has already booked again for another function in October. If that's the rate of repeat business we shall be very happy.
Settling in
Our new senior head waiter, Mark, has been with us for three months now and has settled in well. He has steered himself a gentle but steady path between getting on with long-serving staff and training new recruits. He is going to be a great asset as we make more use of our new areas.
Summer brings its own special chores: somebody has to spend an hour each evening watering beds, shrubs and hanging baskets outside, and we hunt around to replace the garden umbrellas that don't seem to last five minutes (does anybody make an umbrella that doesn't become a tangle of useless wire spokes even before the end of our short English summers?). On top of this, Christmas is on our minds.
Menus for parties have been finalised and are already being sent out to enquirers. A company selling Christmas decorations wants to bring samples next week. More paperwork!
Next diary from Graham Webb is on 5 September
