Whilst there is no law enforcing display of calorie information on restaurant menus it is widely encouraged by governments in Europe. The UK Department of Health recently listed..

According to an article on Bon Appetit, they have come up with some basic rules for tipping, Warning: this does apply to the US where good sense seems to have gone out of the window when it comes to the size of waiters gratuity! Apparently a waiter/waitress there gets disappointed if..

You would be forgiven for thinking that the restaurant industry was hard-hit during the recession, and certainly some areas of the hospitality business are suffering, such as pubs and bars. But a new report from the Harden's London Restaurant Guide defies all speculation by pronouncing the London restaurant scene...

You would be forgiven for thinking that frogs legs were simply a French delicacy, reserved for Michelin-starred restaurants where they come laden with all sorts of sauces. The main market for frogs legs – and the one causing their major depletion in numbers and near-extinction – comes from Asian countries such as Indonesia, China and...

Women, it has been found, eat like mice infront of men and only bump up their calories when dining with other women. According to a study conducted in three US university cafeterias, women make significantly lower calorie choices when they know that they will be dining with men. Interestingly, in a mixed group...

It appears that someone, or everyone, at Little Chef HQ has tasted fame and has thoroughly enjoyed it. Thus, any old story that is possibly newsworthy gets full Hetson Blumenthal-affiliated newscoverage across the restaurant media!...

Community spirit is something that many people bemoan the loss of, yet
a willingness to approach neighbours and strangers in a friendly
manner is often very rare. This past weekend saw the launch of one of
the largest recent projects aimed at bringing...

One of the top discount restaurant sites in the UK is looking to branch out and move off the island. The www.5pm.co.uk site is booming in times of recession as customers are still eager to enjoy the restaurant...

The camel has been a friend, food and transport to the Bedouin peoples of the Arab world for thousands of years. So, the camel's latest incarnation – in burgers in a fast food joint in Saudi Arabia – is somewhat of a downgrade from its normally prestigious standing...

Become a “flexitarian” and flout the rules, say those people who have taken up the habit of eating less meat but who won't commit fully to a vegetarian lifestyle. Flexitarianism is enjoying a high, as diners revel in a new breed of top-class vegetarian restaurants and enjoy a quality of cooking usually reserved for carnivores...

The G8 Leaders gather in Aquila, Italy, this week to discuss further action regarding the financial crisis, climate change and nuclear power. Aquila is also home to one of the most sumptuous banquets in Italy this past week as...

The Little Chef saga rumbles on this week with an exciting new twist in the tale. As we reported earlier in the year, superstar chef Heston Blumenthal used his expertise and battery of top-class chefs to revamp the food and interior of a Little Chef restaurant in Hampshire...

After a decade of lobbying the government and many promises on behalf of the president, the French restaurant industry has finally been able to significantly reduce its value-added tax...

The British prison service has arguably little to shout about, where overcrowding is a serious problem. One of Her Majesty's prisons however, has added a little bit of star quality to its usual dour interior...

Much talk has been flying around about Heston Blumenthal's possibilities for expansion within the restaurant industry, and of late, gossip has surrounded a possible move to the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in London's Hyde Park...

At the same time as business leaders and scientists met in the Danish capital of Copenhagen on the weekend of May 24-26 to discuss global warming at the World Business Summit on Climate Change, another type of “summit” was happening elsewhere in the city to decide upon future changes to the gastronomic world...

Anyone opting to eat aeroplane food on the ground may be considered experimental, but those that are willing to pay for the privilege just raving mad?!...

A chef from Montréal has come under fire from European animal rights activists after proudly serving up seal meat on his menu. The French restauranteur, Benoit Lenglet has been cooking up seal tartare and seal pepperoni for two years at his Québecois restaurant, Au 5ieme Peche...

In the continuing saga that is Heston Blumenthal's one-man crusade to save the Little Chef chain of restaurants, some confusion has arisen regarding the national roll-out of the chef's new improved menu...

Japanese conglomerate, Mitsubishi, have been accused of hoarding stocks of bluefin tuna to sell on in the coming years when numbers of the fish are expected to deplete.

The fish, which can weigh up to 1,500 pounds and live as long as 40 years, is in danger of becoming extinct...

The Meirei or “Milk Bar” which adjoins the legendary Steirereck restaurant in Vienna's central park, the Stadtpark, is by day a very attractive breakfast, lunch or afternoon tea venue. The Meirei also offers what the Austrians term a "fork breakfast"...

Nobu, jointly owned by Robert De Niro is one of the most successful worldwide sushi chains and caters largely to a celebrity clientele...

Ghent, a city of around 233,000 in North East Belgium, has pledged to go vegetarian every Thursday...

In Paris, the culinary capital of the world, diners are now finding it harder to dine out...

The late rise in popularity of fast-food is proving to be an alarming side-effect of the recession...

According to a study by various American universities, many people think that if they “consider” ordering a salad...

It's that time of year again when the famous S.Pellegrino World's 100 Best Restaurants are announced...

After a lifetime of hauling, one of Britain's best known seafaring vessels has come to rest again where she was constructed...

According to a controversial document published online, one in three of Berlin's restaurants have below-par hygiene standards...

Today has seen the gathering of the leaders of the world's 20 most powerful countries in London for the G20 summit in a bid to...

The revolution has begun and bottled water is losing the fight against tap water in restaurants, according to a survey commissioned by the charity...

Last year we reported that a new law was to be implemented...

Following previous reports on the shock closure of the Fat Duck, the Berkshire restaurant owned by well-known chef Heston Blumenthal...

Last week we reported that the Fat Duck restaurant based in Berkshire had to close after 40 people claimed they became ill after eating there...

An alarming series of events caused one of the world's leading restaurants to close its doors this week...

Dinners for a penny probably haven't existed in London since the Victorian times, but now it is entirely possible as Farringdon restauranteur...

This weekend, many restaurants are attempting to cash in on love, as St Valentines Day usually brings record numbers of couples...

This Spring, Scotland awaits the arrival of he original 'celebrity chef' Albert Roux, as he opens his first restaurant in Inverness...

As we reported before, there have been some imaginative changes made to one of the UK's Little Chef roadside cafés, thanks to...

Tomorrow marks an extremely important day in the Scottish calendar – the 250^th anniversary of the birth of celebrated poet, Robert Burns...

For those food critics who dish out scathing reviews, hiding behind their menus and never revealing their identities allows them a necessary anonymity to do their work...

Today was the inauguration of the 44^th President of the United States and the celebrations welcoming Barack Obama to the White House...

The States have already done it, the UK is about to do it this summer and Europe could be soon to follow. The latest wave of legislation will mean that restaurants and bars...

The latest food trend to sweep the uber-healthy city of Los Angeles is... hold onto your smoothies...

Celebrity chefs have certainly become increasingly vocal in recent times and using their favourite medium of television to convey their message is certainly not uncommon. The latest chef in the UK to take up the mantle of food-saviour is Heston Blumenthal who has been busy transforming one branch of the Little Chef chain of roadside cafés...

In the States, tipping is a cultural norm which is practiced almost everywhere, where a service is being offered. However, in these tumultuous economic times, the humble (or, generous) tip is drying up and some customers are feeling quite at sea when it comes to deciding how much of their precious money to give in gratuities...

This week a journalist from the New York Times decided to get on his soap box and pronounce the food in the UK soggy, unfresh and overpriced. The backlash from commentators on Stephen J. Dubner's blog

Anyone hoping to invest in an historic moment of British history may want to jog along to Bonhams auctioneers in London on 20^th January...

The intangible factor that makes a restaurant popular is surely what every chef aims to discover hidden in the griddle pan. Spring in Paris, the tiny 16-seater gastro-bistro, has found the perfect combination of simple and exquisite to excite just about all Parisian restaurant reviewers from Le Figaro to Michelin...

Throughout the hospitality industry there is worry that there will be little growth to look forward to in 2009 as on both sides of the Atlantic, consumers are cutting back on the non-essentials such as dining out and hotels...

This time last year, café owners would not have believed that in just 12 months, France's café culture could be completely brought to its knees, with an average of two establishments closing ...

Even in these hard times – when most of us are strapped financially and businesses are closing their doors – there are indeed those who are profiting from the economic downturn. The rising cost of food and the cost of living has meant that people are now staying..

A restaurant in the city of London has come up with a unique way of celebrating the centenary of one of Britain's most famous expeditions and it involves eating an awful lot of fattening food. Diners at the Green Door Bar and Grill are being treated to a meal worth 6,000 calories – if they can handle it! The feast pays homage to the failed expedition..

What are the rules and regulations regarding the supply of tap water to restaurant-goers in need? Strangely, the laws surrounding this quite basic need for water are extremely ambiguous, as the UK's Guardian newspaper reported on 30th August.

After dining for hours and splashing lots of cash on a sumptuous meal for herself and her..

It appears that Europeans have well and truly caught onto the US food-fashion trend, and that is eschewing their lunchbreaks in favour of, shock horror, working!

Reuter's Business Insight reported that more and more of us across Europe are taking much less time for lunch and, instead, snacking more throughout the day to make up for the food not..

The Olympic athletes aren't the only ones who have gone through a gruelling training schedule in the run up to the Games in Beijing this summer. In order to prepare the mountains of food required for the festival of sport, inspectors and manufacturers from the suburbs of Beijing have been working round the clock to ensure the quality and safety of the food to be..

If your dinner table conversation is getting a bit old, or is limited to the usual "how was your day" line of questioning, then one woman from California may have the answer for you in the form of a little box of tricks named 'Food for Talk'..

The credit crunch must be hitting hard if restaurants are now accomodating to customers who might not have enough cash for a whole meal. In Maine, New England in the U.S, one restaurant has decided to give customers the choice of how much their meal..

Today in the world of haut-cuisine, the Spanish are indeed overtaking the French in terms of culinary innovation. They are being hallmarked as the vanguards of the new futuristic type of cooking, molecular gastronomy, however the Spanish government is making moves to preserve the traditional Mediterranean style cuisine that Spain is supposedly famed..

Hélène Darroze is one of France's, and indeed the world's, most celebrated chefs. Darroze has scored what only a handful of female chefs have managed to achieve. She has 2 Michelin Stars and a highly successful restaurant on Paris's Left Bank named Helene Darroze, and now the talented chef is traversing La Manche to take up the Head Chef position at the Connaught Hotel in Mayfair, London.

Traditional French cuisine
Darroze was brought up in Landes, rural south-west France among passionate foodies in an area where food is steeped in tradition and history. Her family ran the Le Relais restaurant in..

In blind tastings it has been found that many experts cannot differentiate between wild and farmed caviar. However, this doesn't deter the uber-rich from forking out significantly more for the wild variety than they ever would for farmed caviar.

Following on from our previous report on the depletion of stocks of the ancient sturgeon fish in the Caspian Sea, news has come that a tonne of Iranian caviar has gone up for public auction in a British newspaper and is expected to fetch more than £4 millon - 5 million euros.

Secret Iranian Caviar ?
Controversially, industry experts say that Iran has doubled its annual production of beluga..

A new dissertation written by an undergraduate student at the University of Nottingham has researched the growing carbon footprint of restaurants across the UK, in an attempt to outline their environmental impact and unsustainability.

Measuring the 'green' statistics
Science student, Will Brookes, studied the green credentials of 40 restaurants in London and carried out a public survey in his report entitled, The Environmental Sustainability of the British Restaurant Industry: A London Case Study. He placed the restaurants in..

Although he has been tipped possibly the world's greatest chef, or at least the owner of the world's greatest restaurant, Ferran Adria of El Bulli in Spain has had to defend his cooking after a rival Spanish chef has accused him of "poisoning" his diners.

Too many chemicals, not enough real food
Santi Santamaria who has earned himself three Michelin stars as owner and head chef at the Can Fabes Restaurant in Barcelona, laid into Adria over his prolific use of the gelling agent methylcellulose, as well as other gelling agents and emulsifiers. Santamaria admits that it is his roots as the son of a farmer which give him a deep respect for traditional..

The glamour may have diminished somewhat from the role of the waiter or waitress, but nowadays fewer and fewer people in western Europe aspire to be part of the front of house staff. In a survey conducted by Square Meal magazine revealed that half of the complaints that they received last year were to do with poor service, a rise of 7% on 2006.

Waiting Tables not Interesting
The status of waiters and maitre d's is in sharp decline and with this, the quality of service is declining too. In recent years, western Europe has seen an influx of job-seekers from eastern Europe who are filling the many..

Germany, the "Land of Ideas" has come up with many excellent inventions in the past, including the diesel engine and the printing press. Now to add to its list of accomplishments is a fully-automated restaurant dubbed the "Robot Restaurant". 'S baggers restaurant in Nuremburg was the brainchild of local businessman Michael Mack who wanted to do away with the stuffy traditions of waiter service and create something new and exciting..

The Thai New Year is a three day celebration that usually falls between the 10th and 18th of April. This year the New Year, known in Thai as Songkran, will be celebrated from the 13th to the 15th April, so what better time to reflect upon some of the traditions of this centuries-old national celebration. The ancestors of the Thai people originated from the Yunnan Province in China and it is here, nearly one thousand years ago, that the New Year festivities first took place. The dates correspond to the fifth full moon of the lunar calendar and the Songkran festival's original..

In the world of haute-cuisine, it is a grand achievement for a chef to receive one or two Michelin Stars, and the absolute epitome of culinary excellence to achieve three. This week, however top chef Marco Pierre White launched an attack on the Guide claiming that it is "outdated" and has "varying standards" from country to country. He said, "I've dined in Michelin-starred places in New York and I'm confused. There are at least fifty restaurants in England as good as the two-star restaurants over there, rather than the paltry ten that currently hold..

After a hard day at the office, the one word that should be on your mind is relaxation and everything you do should be towards the goal of relaxing! This is not only to benefit our bodies and relax our muscles, but to give our brains and our energy levels the best chance of waking up energized and raring-to-go the next day. If you always think in advance of the effects of what you're eating, you can't go wrong. Be aware that what you eat at dinner time has a direct effect on your sleep, so try and choose foods that naturally relax the body and mind. Tryptophan is an amino acid that our bodies cannot make, but the brain needs it in order to make serotonin – a neurotransmitter that has a calming effect on the brain..

Ever feel like you're being watched? One "self-service" restaurant at a university in the Netherlands is doing exactly that; watching its diners to measure their reactions to subtle changes in the environment and how this affects their eating habits. Many simple choices that we make are unconscious and this new interactive study at the University of Wageningen aims to track how details such as lighting, wall colour, the layout and the attitude of staff affect what we choose to eat and how much we throw away..

In a similar move to the French, authorities in Germany have banned smoking in cafes bars and restaurants effective from today. The Germans however have been more lenient than the French in its enforcement. Berlin has decreed that a grace period should be allowed, and the ban will not be enforced for the first..

France has finally taken the leap and banned smoking in restaurants cafes and bars. From 1st January 2008 it will be illegal, although outside areas such as terraces and under pavement awnings are exempt. It's been a long time coming; in an attempt to curb smoking October 2003 saw a 20% government hike in cigarette prices. Recently on 1st February 2007 a national ban on smoking in public was imposed covering airports, railway stations, hospitals, offices and schools, but leaving the restaurant business..

Dinner is served after sunset on Christmas Eve in the Czech Republic; traditionally it should not be served until after the first star has come out, and consists of carp and potato salad, sometimes preceded by mushroom, sauerkraut or fish soup. Carp can be prepared a hundred different ways. Christmas carp is specially raised in ponds and then sold from large tubs placed on the streets..

After opening only 11 months ago the New York Michelin Guide announces it has awarded Gordon Ramsay of 'The London' two stars in its first year making Ramsay one of only 6 establishments in the city to have two stars. Gordon Ramsay now claims that between all his various restaurant ventures he now has the largest total of Michelin Stars in the world; currently 12 stars..

Beware of menus using words like "luscious", clogged salt and pepper, and prefilled bread baskets, all warning signs of a bad restaurant in an amusing article over on the chow.com blog which looks to describe the nightmare restaurant..

Described as soft, shy and determined, Anne-Sophie Pic, 37, celebrates her award today of three Michelin Stars, the first of its kind to a woman in more than 50 years. Behind the award a touching story covering four generations of the Pic family. Just imagine, 4 generations! How many people do you know are still working in a business started by their great grandmother ?

If you have just spent the last few days busy paying bills and spring cleaning the house then it's very likely you are of Chinese origin! Immediately before the New Year the whole house is washed, dusted and decorated with flowers and traditional red colours. New clothes are bought, often red, and outstanding bills are paid off to give everyone a flying start to the New Year

Did you send a card today.. will you be dining out tonight on St Valentines ?
Worldwide we celebrate by sending an incredible 1 billion Valentine cards, with 85% of those bought by women according to the Greeting Card Association

We continue in part ll by shedding some light on exactly who inspects the Restaurants, their training , and how they are expected to work.
It is clear the organisation takes its role very seriously, and no restaurant will receive an award unless it has been visited multiple times by several different inspectors to ensure consistency of results. There are many other good guides now competing but none can boast such a thorough process

The Michelin Guide has had extraordinary success. This year it will celebrate it's 107th birthday. Originally distributed as a free guide, it was written for the adventurous french motorists of the time, to point out where they could get their often broken car repaired and which hotel to stay at in the meantime

Successful tipping
In most people's minds a tip is a reward for great service, and most would believe it has a positive impact on the service they receive, especially if a regular customer. However tipping in Europe has its own peculiarities and this article gives an easy guide to successful tipping...