Take a friend for a fiver

See earlier trail of this great new restaurant promotion here.

The most important fact to remember in any recession, I have heard recently from numerous chefs and restaurateurs, is that one day it will be over.

But many now are about to enter uncharted waters. The boost from Christmas and New Year bookings has vanished and, as the average spend has been noticeably down even in those places where occupancy has remained relatively stable, there is less money in the bank to confront what is invariably the quietest quarter of the year.

In straightforward marketing terms, the solution appears relatively simple: the restaurateur has to broaden his or her business’s appeal to a wider audience, to do away with any misconceptions about appearing stuffy, expensive or exclusive. Yet in doing so, there arises the challenge of holding on to the restaurant’s identity, of maintaining the vision that lay behind the decision to open and, indeed, to work anti-social hours ever since to make people feel good.

But in two important respects chefs today have less room to manoeuvre than before.

The first is in their relationship with their suppliers. In the past, chefs could find another 30-45 days’ credit by simply and unilaterally extending their payment terms so that instead of paying them at the end of the month after the month in which the goods were delivered, they would increase this by another month. But over the last decade specific suppliers, and the provenance of the goods many chefs feature on their menu, have become increasingly important. Many of the small producers of beef, lamb, chickens, cheese and salads around the UK are now frequently mentioned by name and if the chef wants to continue to source the best produce, he cannot simply extend these payment terms in the way that was once the norm.

The second is that most, if not all, restaurants now offer a reasonably, if not keenly, priced lunch menu. Ever since the FT first introduced the initial Lunch for a Fiver back in the equally depressing days of early 1993, many restaurateurs have taken to writing their own lunchtime menus at prices that are hard for any newspaper to match now.

That is the major reason why several of us at the FT sat down with Richard and Peter Harden in late November to brainstorm an original idea for 2009 and why I believe ‘Take a Friend for a Fiver’ offers such a great opportunity for both the customer and the restaurateur. It’s new, sociable, easy to understand, great value, and it does not depend on any particular price points. With this scheme you can go à la carte or stick to the fixed-price menus.

To discover what plans had been prepared – and therefore what lay in store for restaurant goers around the UK – I contacted nine leading chefs and restaurateurs and put three very broad questions to them. What were their plans to attract new customers? Which restaurant were they most looking forward to eating out at during the coming year? And for those planning specific visits to their restaurants, which particular dish were they currently most proud of?

Sally Clarke from Clarke’s in Notting Hill responded immediately with the details of what she is planning for her restaurant and shop next door.

“I want to encourage more people to drop in, to have the full Clarke’s experience if they want but on other occasions just to have a plate of our fish cakes and chips. We will have more daily specials and a new menu format for dinner that will be as keenly priced as I can manage without compromising the ingredients we buy. And we are going to be promoting far more heavily the prepared dishes we make for the shop – risottos, coq au vin, foie gras in kilner jars and all our bakery’s produce – so that we will be able to better serve the local neighbourhood with either an informal supper or a dinner party.

“If I ever got the time off I would head straight to Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California, as it continues to be my touchstone, the best restaurant in the world in terms of style, flavour and balance for me. And it’s those kind of dishes that still inspire me to cook whatever looks, tastes or feels seasonal, which today would be a salad with fruit, a pear, clementine or pomegranate, a dressing made with chives, pomegranate syrup, balsamic vinegar and new season’s olive oil.”

Over at Le Gavroche in Mayfair, Michel Roux Jnr and his staff confront a particular challenge.

“So far occupancy has been good – in fact in September and October we were up on last year – but there has suddenly been a marked down-turn in the spend on alcohol, both pre- or post-dinner drinks or that second bottle. And our sommeliers are being grilled more and more by customers to recommend good-value wines that they may not have tried before or wines from a vintage not necessarily known as one of the best. But that is good for the staff and where, I think, they come into their own.

“We haven’t increased our set price lunch menu for two years now and we obviously won’t be doing so this year, so that, plus the fact that Le Gavroche is a ‘safe bet’ for that special occasion dinner, should keep me and my chefs busy. I had some fabulous meals at Zuma in Knightsbridge last year and I look forward to more of the same. Richard Corrigan’s new place round the corner is top of my list for January.

“As to one particular dish, that’s perhaps the most difficult question as I enjoy cooking and eating everything on our menu. But if you push me I would have to say it’s the Souffle Suissesse, our twice-baked cheese soufflé which has been on the menu since we opened 40 years ago, because it is one of the simplest yet most difficult to get right. It is exceedingly rich, yet light, creamy and indulgent – perfect comfort food in the depressing months ahead.”

Over at Café Spice Namaste in London’s East End, Cyrus Todiwala responded with his characteristic enthusiasm. “We’ve just had a brainstorming session to ensure that we go all out with special dinners, master classes and promoting the products we make, to open up our world to as many customers as possible. We will be holding an evening with the Scotch Malt Whisky Society in February, for example.

“And I will be cooking as much as possible with North Ronaldsay mutton, which comes from the northernmost of the Orkney Islands. This meat is fabulous because they live on a diet of seaweed and kelp and it is very, very lean. And then one night I would like to take my wife to Mosimann’s Club in Belgravia. I’m not a member but he has always been my food hero.”

Outside London, Baba Hine at The Corse Lawn Hotel in Gloucestershire saw a specific advantage for those like her who run small hotels or restaurants with rooms. “It is always cheaper to discount the rooms than it is to discount the food or the wine,” she explained, “and I also think that we can attract those who want to ‘get away from it all’ during a recession even for a night or two. Then they feel comfortable about having dinner here.

“I also believe that when times are hard you’ve got to encourage your local customers even more, so we’ve been running Credit Crunch Lunches and Recession Winter Dinners here for the last few months and they’ve been very popular. If I were eating here, I would definitely choose the roast woodcock with game chips and bread sauce and top of my list for our next outing is to try Dominic Chapman’s cooking at The Royal Oak in Paley Street, Berkshire.”

Experience of surviving previous recessions linked Hine’s responses with those of David Pitchford at Read’s in Faversham, Kent.

“This will be our third recession,” he explained, “and we have come to realise that there are some benefits. It concentrates the mind and should remind us of why we are here, which is to serve people. That’s why I will still be cooking our cheese soufflé on Parmesan glazed smoked haddock with a cream sauce, which our customers never let us take off the menu – it’s the kind of dish that forms a bond between us and our customers. And then one night I want to take my wife off to Angela Hartnett’s Murano in Mayfair.”

The responses from Bryan Webb at Tyddyn Llan in north Wales and Tom Kitchin at The Kitchin in Leith, Scotland, were linked by a common emphasis on keeping prices down by using less expensive ingredients and wasting nothing, an approach Kitchin admitted he owed to his time under Pierre Koffmann at La Tante Claire.

Webb plans a return trip to Nigel Howarth’s Northcote Manor in Lancashire and maintaining one particular dish on his menu – a fillet of line-caught sea bass with spinach and a beurre blanc mixed with lavabread – which I remember writing about 18 years ago when Webb was cooking at Hilaire in south Kensington.

Kitchin also intends to stick to his signature dish of braised pig’s head with crisp ears and langoustine tails, which takes two days to prepare from start to finish; to launch Your Kitchin, which will take the best of his restaurant to private houses and corporate offices; and, when he’s down in London filming Saturday Kitchen, to slip off to eat at La Petite Maison in Mayfair, where his friend, Rafael Duntoye, is the chef.

Not that far away, two other London chefs, Peter Gordon at Providores and Cass Titcombe at Canteen, explained how they had been working hard during the past year to make their restaurants even more attractive in 2009.

“We’ve invested money in new lamps, plates and a simple argon wine preservation system which our regulars really like,” Gordon explained. “You have to invest to keep the optimism up. There will be a stronger emphasis on simple food and New Zealand wines. I am really pleased with one dish at the moment, which is crisp roast Middlewhite pork belly with a Sichuan pepper broth because it is something my sous-chef and I have been working on and it’s great for winter. The place I have been meaning to visit for some time is Michel Bras in Laguiole, south west France.”

Because of its focus on inexpensive British food, Canteen has always been very busy during January and February and Titcombe is only too aware that this year he could be even busier.“Canteen was designed to be a value-driven offer and we are continually looking to increase our overall efficiency so that we can hold our prices during 2009. So the Canteen pie represents what our restaurants are all about. Freshly baked, the fillings change every day and there is always a meat and a vegetarian option. We serve it as a complete dish with mash, greens and gravy for £10.50 so you can come here, have a pie and a drink and leave completely satisfied without spending a lot of money.

“Richard Corrigan’s new place in Mayfair is top of my list. I share his puritan ethos of sourcing great produce and not doing too much to it.”

Take a Friend for a Fiver is, I believe, the most sociable restaurant promotion the FT has ever created as well as being the easiest for any FT reader to take advantage of.

The basic mechanics are as follows:

1. Before making your first booking, you need to collect three FT tokens but two are available in today’s Weekend paper and a third will be available in the FT on Monday 12 January 2009, which is therefore the first day for bookings. Or you can, of course, pool tokens from today’s Weekend FT with a friend. For future bookings, each weekday copy of the FT will contain a single token and each Weekend paper will contain two. These will run until the promotion comes to an end on Friday 13 February 2009.

2. Make your booking at any of the restaurants listed in today’s paper or on www.ft.com/lunch

It is absolutely essential that when the booking is made, either on the phone or on line, directly with the restaurant, you state that you are booking for the FT Lunch, Take a Friend for a Fiver.

3. When you arrive at the restaurant, hand in your tokens and order your lunch either from the set lunch or the à la carte menus. The principle for calculating the final bill is exactly the same.

4. When the bill is presented, the calculation will appear as follows. There will be a total for all the food items you have consumed, which will have been divided in half. £5 – the Lunch with the FT fiver – will then have been added to take account of the second diner – and on top of that the charges for any drinks, wine, coffee and service.

5. The same principle applies for tables of 4, 6 or 8 with the only difference being that the number of FT tokens that have to be presented has to increase proportionately, as will the number of fivers on the final bill, to account for the extra number of people around the table.

6. Finally, after your meal, don’t forget to convert your experiences, thoughts and impressions into as succinct and entertaining a review as possible. Please then send them via www.ft.com/lunch, where all the entries will be read by Andy Davis, the editor of the Weekend FT, and myself. The person judged to have written what we consider to be the best review will follow in the footsteps of last year’s winner, who spent a weekend in the Cognac region of France courtesy of Remy Martin.