Celebrating 23 years of helping our clients grow their businesses

Heinz Beck is taking over the running of the Apsleys restaurant at the Lanesborough hotel next month. This is the first restaurant outside of Italy for the Michelin star chef. The menu will feature traditional Italian food including antipasti, soup. pasta, meat and fish main courses.

I think we might just have found the next outing for the William Murray supper group!

Croydon may not automatically spring to mind as a culinary destination, but as the team is finding out there really are some hidden gems in this South London Borough.

One of these gems is Albert’s Table, serving modern British food using quality, seasonal British ingredients.  The head chef and co-owner Joby Wells, who has worked his way up through some of the best Michelin-starred restaurants, serves up a menu that is quite simply fantastic.  Spoilt for choice, the starters that excited the tastebuds were the ‘Fresh pasta cannelloni of corn-fed, free range chicken with creamed bacon broth and tarragon’ and the ‘Short crust tart of Dorset crab with a rouille dressing and salad’, and the main course that topped the bill for us all was the ‘Confit shoulder of Romney Marsh lamb with summer beans and ratatouille garnish’ – and all I can say is that there were clean plates all round!

Although pretty full after the starters and mains, the team simply felt they could not miss out on sampling the desserts – and they weren’t disappointed!  For a three-course lunch menu the price wasn’t bad either – at £15 a head, we’ll definitely be returning.

The 3663 team worked their magic on the William Murray boardroom and transformed it to a winter wonderland for a series of Christmas briefings last Friday. The client was delighted with the smooth running of the day and the level of attendance from target media – attending titles included The Grocer, PubChef, Caterer & Hotelkeeper, ProWholesaler, The Publican and Cost Sector Catering.

Today’s Daily Express is reporting that there is a new way to spend an evening out with the girls in London that doesn’t include a dreaded hangover the next day!

‘Tea’ an appropriately named tea room offers great nights out and entertainments with the usual scones, pastries and cakes from morning to evening.  It seems to be a great place to get all glammed up for and catch up with friends for a refined Friday or Saturday night out.

The William Murray team are getting excited about Gourmet Odyssey, the ultimate gastronomic road trip, hitting London this Autumn

At lunchtime on Saturday 10 October, a fleet of liveried Routemaster buses will embark on a special tour of London restaurants.To add to the experience, a well-known restaurant critic or chef will be on board each bus.

After a glass of Mumm Champagne at the exclusive Met Bar in Mayfair, the bus whisks you away to three of London’s best restaurants. You will have your starter in one, your main course in another and your dessert in the third. Guests will be returned to the Met Bar once the tour is complete.

So although it may be a little hard on the purse strings, it’s still a unique and delicious way to experience the culinary delights of London. We’ll see you there!

It’s a sad day for British pubs today as The Sun reports that Punch Taverns have announced they are putting a further 450 of their pubs up for sale. Punch put 1,250 pubs into a “turn-around” division earlier this year, and have since sold a third of these, showing there’s no sign of economic recovery yet for the pub industry.

So if you’re not ready to wave goodbye to your local pub just yet, now’s the time to start showing your support, before it’s gone for good!

Recent studies have once again shot down the once acclaimed low-carbohydrate, high protein Atkins diet. The new study from Harvard shows that the diet clogs arteries with plaque, and others have said in the past that it also increases the risk of heart disease – a diet this morning’s Daily Mail claims that at one time, three million Britons were following.

Designed by heart doctor Robert Atkins, it makes me wonder just how good this ‘heart doctor’ was at his day job if he recommended and wrote a book on a diet that clogs arteries and raises the risk of heart disease?!

The Lanesborough Hotel in Knightsbridge is set to introduce three-Michelin-starred chef, Heinz Beck, to its establishment next month to open a restaurant in the 120-seat space that was the former Conservatory Restaurant.

The chef, known for running the world-famous La Pergola at the Cavaleri Hotel in Rome, will oversee the Italian-style restaurant, with support from executive chef Massimiliano Blasone, who has worked with Beck for over ten years.

With Ramsay, Wareing and now Blumenthal and Beck all to be within blocks of each other by early next year, Knightsbridge will be the dining hub of London.

Those of us that travel in and around London have become used to receiving two free afternoon newspapers, however the news today that Rupert Murdoch’s freesheet, The London Paper, is set to close on Friday 18th September  will see the end to the paper war with its afternoon rival London Lite and one wonders now whether this paper will survive.  Certainly one good thing will be a reduction in the number of discarded newspapers on the streets and ultimately the saving of around 2,000 trees.

The William Murray supper club is in for a good evening at the end of this month, when they visit Skylon.   The National Skills Academy for Hospitality has recently awarded the front-of-house team for delivering the highest level of customer service in London.  It scored a whopping 98% for customer service in a mystery-shopper survey, nearly 25% more than any other business in London.

The survey follows the launch of the Smiles for Britain campaign launched in May, which encourages diners to photograph the hospitality industry’s warmest, friendliest smiles, to reflect the level of their customer service.

Let’s hope more UK restaurants follow in Skylon’s footsteps.  A simple smile is a good start and can go a long way….