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...

A renaissance of Scottish culinary traditions is taking place at the moment and what better time for the Foodies Festival to set up, back where it began, in the city of Edinburgh. Having expanded to...

Important changes are afoot in the fish industry. Recently we reported on the backlash against the unethical and unsustainable farming of bluefin tuna, which has brought the voices of celebrities, artists, ministers and chefs to the forefront in the fight against the current devastating...

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!...

The winners of the prestigious Catey restaurant awards have been announced for the year 2009. Bestowed by the UK's Caterer and Hotelkeeper magazine, the Cateys have given an indication of what's hot and what's not in the UK hospitality industry since their inception in 1984. Awards include Hotel of the Year, Best Marketing Campaign...

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...

UK publicans who rent their establishments from a landlord are seeing major hikes in tenancy fees which are propelling them towards bankruptcy and enormous debt. Landlords needing to pay their own debts and creditors have been raising rent by tens of thousands of pounds per year to cover their own costs...

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...

Londoners have some of the highest living costs in Europe, let alone the UK, and to reflect this the Mayor of London has called upon the hospitality industry to voluntarily adopt the London Living Wage (LLV) for its employees...

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...

Is it wholly necessary that celebrities find the need to strip off for the camera every time there's a worthy cause to get behind? Animal rights group PETA's (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) punchy “I'd rather go naked” campaign featured a nude Pamela Anderson and Naomi Campbell...

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...

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...

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

This weekend will see the foodie crowd well and truly descend on the English southcoast town of Brighton...

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 European Union is currently trying to negotiate the best conditions for workers under its proposed...

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

The end of March saw the fourth annual Bernard Loiseau Culinary Festival kick off on the beautiful Indian ocean island of Mauritius...

Early last year, we reported on the crisis...

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

You may think that Twitter is a social networking site on which people talk to everybody and nobody at the same time...

Celebrity chefs appear to be everywhere currently and their influence on the modern media is far reaching...

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...

In 2008, the UK's Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alastair Darling, ushered in an increase of 18% on excise duty for beer...

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

In a survey carried out by the UK's Trading Standards authority and the consumer lobbyist group Consensus Action on Salt...

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

The new Michelin Guide for the UK and Ireland 2009 will be released on Friday 23^rd January, with some new surprises along the way.

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...

For most dogs, the main highlights of the day include walkies and dinner time, so imagine the excitement that must have been bounding around the American city of Boston recently when Purina Alpo dog food set up a gourmet doggy restaurant for two..

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 ...

Ever since he started out in the restaurant industry, Gordon Ramsay has been driven to succeed at home and abroad. Having trained under the likes of Marco Pierre White in London and Joël Robuchon in Paris, Ramsay has been dominant figure in the fine dining arena ever since creating a name for himself at Aubergine Restaurant and later, at his eponymous restaurant Gordon Ramsay in..

Chocolate lovers are to be put to the test this week as a new seven-course tasting menu, featuring chocolate in every dish, is to be unveiled at London's Almeida restaurant. In celebration of the UK's National Chocolate Week, the chefs at the North London eatery have devised an enticing menu featuring a myriad of different..

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..

This week a ruling in the United Kingdom may prove to be a coup for hard-bitten waiting staff whose wages are less-than-desirable and often below the country's minimum wage limit. The High Court ruled in favour of HM Revenue & Customs to ban restaurants from using tips to top up staff's..

Many wierd and wonderful gimmicks are employed to attract more customers to restaurants and cafes, but few will have been as terrifying as the newly refurbished "terrorism-themed" restaurant Buns and Guns in Beirut.

The Lebanese capital's cafe scene has been in sharp decline since 2006 due to troubles erupting in the area, however the owner of this novel cafe - situated in a predominantly Hezbollah area of the city - says that his..

Reports on the success of the smoking bans across the world, from countries such as Germany, Ireland, France and Hong Kong, confirm that reactions have been very mixed. Whereas people in Germany are daring enough to flout the law and jump the border to smoke in neighbouring Poland, the Irish and Italians stubbed..

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..

After 40 years of male domination in the kitchens of Le Gavroche in London, former sous-chef Rachel Humphrey has finally broken through to be crowned the restaurant's first female Head Chef. The chef patron at Le Gavroche, Michel Roux Jnr praised his protegée's excellent..

Paul Haeberlin, the owner and former head chef of the Auberge de l'Ill in Alsace, France, died earlier this month at the age of 84. Many within the restaurant industry flocked to give its condolences and heart-felt sentiments to the family of this culinary heavyweight, who inspired and tutored many of the world's greatest chefs. Throughout his later years, Haeberlin showed a dedication to his restaurant by continuing to..

It appears that the restaurants scooping up all the best prizes and getting an awful lot of recognition are the ones associated with molecular gastronomy, and they certainly seem to be succeeding in all areas of the business. This latest development isn't necessarily to do with the eccentric style of cooking, it's giving congratulations to Europe's best sommelier who happens to work at Heston Blumenthal's Fat Duck in the UK.

Best Sommelier in Europe
Turkish-born Head Sommelier Isa Bal was named as Best Sommelier in Europe by the Association de la sommellerie international in Sofia, Bulgaria on 19th May, beating off competition from..

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..

This month in Paris, the Bistro Romain on the Avenue des Champs Elysees has been host to one of the most publicised protests regarding illegal immigrants in France and the stand-off is continuing between workers, the owners and France's largest trade union.

Bistro Romain workers illegal
Illegal workers, mostly from Africa, have been staging a sit-in for nearly a week to protest the poor working and living conditions that they are subjected to at the Bistro. The protest is one of many that have been springing up in the French capital since President..

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..

As if the smoking ban wasn't enough for Europeans to digest, the French are now seriously looking into putting breathalysers into bars and bistros to test customers on leaving the premises.

Mandatory testing
The plan is supported by the French Ecology minister Jean-Louis Borloo and will be presented to the President Nicholas Sarkozy. Borloo wants breathalysing-on-exit to be obligatory in all bars and restaurants open until 2am.

"I can tell you that tomorrow, at the council of ministers, Health Minister Roselyne Bachelot and I will present a decree to make electronic breathalyser tests obligatory in drinking establishments open until 2:00 am, so that everyone can check their..

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..

Many are now ignoring the German smoking ban in force since Jan 1st this year, affecting Berlin and 11 states. The remaining states of Saxony, Rheinland Palatinate, Saarland and Thuringia will bring in their own ban from July, although it remains to be seen how effective it will be. Recent data showed that a similar smoking ban in Hong Kong had actually increased the level of smoking as people defied the ban.

Smoking Complaints
German Police are not following up on complaints about smokers and seem to have allowed the bar and cafe proprietors their own discretion on whther they allow smoking on premises..

Having been at the pinnacle of modern European cuisine for over a decade, The Fat Duck restaurant in England, is still a pioneering force in the culinary world thanks to its owner and head chef, Heston Blumenthal. So what puts this restaurant at the top of the pile?

Science and Cooking
After failing to gain employment in the kitchens of London, Blumenthal set himself the task of learning to cook and he began accumulating his knowledge and expertise on his travels to France. In 1995 he opened The Fat Duck in Bray, situated near Maidenhead..

Imagine a restaurant so huge that it spans six floors and needs 35 chefs to hold the fort. Welcome to the famous Tour d'Argent, Paris' oldest restaurant which has just been re-opened to grand fanfare after 3 months of re-furbishment and upgrade.

The new owner André Terrail, 27, set about re-establishing the reputation of this gastronomic legend, as it had fallen in Parisian estimation in recent years. Frequent changes of the "master" chef in meant that the Tour d'Argent suffered inconsistency in its..

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..

France banned smoking in all of its bars, cafes and restaurants on the 1st of January this year, this followed a wider public smoking ban introduced on 1st February 2007. It will be interesting to follow the effects of the ban, also implemented in Berlin at the same time. In another part of the world Hong Kong now reports INCREASED..

In the UK, the British adore Indian cuisine. It could be said, that they love it more than any other modern culinary import as it is an industry worth £3.5 billion. So why now, after such dazzling success over the years, is the curry trade falling on hard times? Firstly, UK government regulations surrounding temporary work permits have tightened dramatically in recent years, meaning a great shortage of skilled chefs. Secondly, the price of rice worldwide has increased dramatically in only..

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..

Amador of Frankfurt famous for its Molecular Cuisine wins a 3 star endorsement in the latest Michelin guide. The Spanish restaurateur Juan Amador is particularly commended for developing his own style of MC, including Müritz lamb with coconut and curry says Jean-Luc Naret of Michelin. "Everything we make is basic on classical cuisine," says Chef Juan. "Even when we cook with modern..

The furore surrounding the new 2008 Michelin Guide for Los Angeles reached fever pitch last week when some over anxious chefs decided to raid the Michelin website in advance of the official announcements. Whether they hacked into the site, or obtained the information legitimately is unclear, but the whole of the Las Vegas and Los Angeles results were..

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..

Bottled water is under attack again, this time in the States where the mayors of New York and San Francisco are urging people to use tapwater to help save the huge amounts of energy on bottle production. Paradoxically it is oil at the centre of this issue rather than water..

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 ?

All over the web restaurants are getting reviewed and rated by us mere mortals. No longer do we hang on the words of the Sunday paper celebrity gourmets, we have people power at our fingertips

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