Table talk

Age 36? Sorry, go eat somewhere else

Many restaurants target particular types of guest, but few can be quite as specific as Bella Pasta, the Whitbread chain.

Typical diners? Women under 35, financially independent but not wealthy, who particularly enjoy going out with friends and talking about their love-lives - "Spice Girls without the millions," as group marketing man Ed Aspel cheerily put it at a recent managers' meeting.

At least he'll avoid workplace stress

Jurys Hotels bosses Peter Malone andPat McCann tell the following tale, illustrating the strange approach some people take towards career progression.

The pair were interviewing for a new hotel manager in the UK, after advertising in Caterer, when the phone rang. It was a prospective candidate who wanted to reschedule a Friday afternoon appointment because he was used to starting his weekend at Friday lunchtime and would rather like to get away on time.

The Jurys team helped him to get away on time all right - but with no interview, andno job.

At least it wasn't Sweeney Todd

It has been claimed that the pulsing light patterns at the cinema can have a subliminal, almost hypnotic, effect on viewers that can influence them in subtle ways.

If true, this could explain the experience of the City Centre Restaurants outlets which regularly mop up the cinema crowds.

The run of the multi-Oscar-winning Titanic was reported to have seriously sunk profits at its restaurants adjacent to cinemas. The group blamed the film's sheer length and emotionally draining denouement for damping down the audiences' desire to eat afterwards.

The Full Monty, however, provided much richer pickings. The baring of all that flesh appears to have whetted film-goers' appetites.

Finishing, of course, with iced tea

Talking of Titanic, fans of the hit movie in Japan can now tuck into the classic French meal served to first-class passengers that fateful night 86 years ago.

As part of a promotion linked to the epic tale, the Royal Hotel company has created a Last Dinner on the Titanic menu at its flagship Rihga hotel in Osaka. And it sold more than 2,000 of the meals last month, according to Yumiko Inoko of the hotel's sales planning division. Sounds like a meal to remember.

None they'll tell you about, at any rate

The US appetite for branding restaurants and putting them into "non-traditional sites" seems to have no boundaries. Schools, hospitals and military bases are all targets for fast-food brands.

But there is one exception, as a speaker at the Branding America conference noted recently: jails. "We did think about putting brands into jails," he said. "They are, after all, a captive market. But then we realised that the prisoners don't have any money."

Next, we eject people with bad toupees

Last week's (tobacco industry-backed) AIR conference was aimed at urging the licensed trade to install decent ventilation to ward off what it says would be a commercially damaging ban on smoking in public places.

Somewhat ironic, then, that they chose as their venue Whitehall's Royal United Services Institute, which seemed to have its own smoking ban in operation. Smokers were forced to huddle in the street outside during the coffee break, along with those other social pariahs - mobile phone users.