Friday Five: the week's top news
- Chef Jason Atherton has warned he may have to mothball a number of his London restaurants in the new year if the recruitment crisis plaguing the sector does not ease. Atherton, who has seven venues in the capital including Mayfair flagship Pollen Street Social, told the Evening Standard he has 350 unfilled vacancies across his restaurant group — representing about a third of his workforce — and faces having to make 'heart breaking' decisions as a result of the shortfall. It comes as new data shows more staff are leaving jobs in hospitality now than at any time since the start of the pandemic. The latest data from workforce management company Fourth reveals that 8.3% of the workforce left the sector between August and September, the highest percentage of leavers since 15.6% of people left their roles in March 2020.
- High-profile restaurant critic Marina O’Loughlin has left The Sunday Times after five years. O’Loughlin took over from the late AA Gill in 2017 having previously been the restaurant critic for the Guardian and - before that - the Metro. The critic has won numerous plaudits and awards for her writing style and no-punches-pulled reviews and is one of the last genuinely anonymous high profile restaurant reviewers in the country, with her identity kept a secret from the majority of people in the restaurant industry. It is this anonymity that many believe gives O’Loughlin the edge on the more well-known newspaper critics and leads to a more representative restaurant review.
- Peter Sanchez-Iglesias will open a relaxed-yet-ambitious Italian restaurant within the site that was previously home to his Michelin-starred restaurant Casamia. Opening later this month, Casa is being billed as a reimagining of the Sanchez-Iglesias family’s original Casamia restaurant in the Bristol suburb of Westbury-on-Trym, which opened in 1999. Peter and his late brother Jonray cooked at their parent's neighbourhood restaurant throughout their teens, gradually moving it away from its Italian origins to create one of the UK’s most ambitious restaurants. Casamia - which moved to The General development in central Bristol in 2016 - closed earlier this year.
- Rising costs and economic uncertainty have damaged confidence in the hospitality sector with the majority of businesses taking a pessimistic view of the prospects for the eating and drinking out market in the next 12 months. Just 8% of leaders of multi-site businesses feel confident about the sector over the next year, a sharp drop from 23% in the last survey in June, according to new research from CGA by NielsenIQ and Fourth reveals. The figure is a huge decrease from March this year when 65% of business owners has confidence in the sector’s progress, with rising energy costs and inflation the main causes for the drop. The proportion of leaders feeling confident about prospects for their own business over the next 12 months is higher at 29%, according to the October Business Confidence Survey. This, says CGA and Fourth, reflects the greater resilience of multi-site operators than independents, that have borne the brunt of closures in recent months. However, this number has also dipped, from 53% in the last Business Confidence Survey.
- Launceston Place chef patron Ben Murphy has been named National Chef of the Year after impressing a judging panel that included some of the biggest names in the industry. Murphy - who trained under Pierre Koffmann and has overseen the kitchen at his Kensington restaurant since 2017 - cooked a menu that included butter poached pollock, radish and oscietra followed by Lake Sistrict young fallow, watercress, onion, batek pepper with a dessert of clementine, honey, Tahitensis vanilla and yoghurt. Meanwhile, Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons chef Mae Dionio has been crowned Young National Chef of the Year.
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