Friday Five: the week's top news
- Somerset restaurant 28 Market Place has closed three years after its launch. Announcing the news on Instagram over the Easter weekend, the restaurant’s owners said: “It is with the heaviest of hearts that we have to tell you that 28, the bakery and the wine shop will not be opening again. We did all we could until the very end, but it just wasn’t enough.”
- Chef Francesco Mazzei has left D&D London after seven years with the group in order to spend more time travelling and focusing on his charity work. Sartoria and Fiume, the two London restaurants led by Mazzei under the D&D umbrella, will both continue to operate. “It's been a pleasure working at Sartoria and Fiume, mentoring young chefs and cooking great Italian food,” Mazzei said. “But now I want to travel and to focus on my charity work.”
- The BAO team’s upcoming Marylebone restaurant will be a take on a Taiwanese dumpling house and will be the first within the group to trade all through the day. Located moments from Oxford Street on Marylebone's James Street, BAO Mary will be set over two floors offering a menu that centres around dumplings with options including boiled cull yaw dumplings; boiled prawn dumplings; and pan-fried mushroom guo tie dumplings. Other dishes include street food-style Majiang noodles; bone marrow, cured egg and gao rice; Taiwanese-fried chicken chop; and beef tendon nugget with burnt chilli sauce. A selection of BAO's eponymous bao buns will also feature on the menu.
- Tripadvisor stopped 1.3 million fake reviews from appearing on its platform in 2022 as part of its crackdown on the practice. The company’s third edition of its biennial Review Transparency Report shows that 30.2 million reviews were posted globally on its site in 2022, a 20% increase since 2020 when the previous edition of the report was published. Of those reviews, 4.4% - 1.33 million - were determined to be fake or fraudulent with the company reporting that is detection and moderation processes prevented 72% of these submissions from ever making it onto the platform, up from 67% in 2020. Around 2.3 million reviews were manually investigated by a Tripadvisor moderator.
- The latest Barclays report is grim reading for restaurants with sales down 5.6% in March and consumer research showing that 62% of consumers are trying to cut down on eating out in full-service establishments. Pubs, bars and clubs fared better, with spend up 3.2% on the same period last year. Spending on takeaways and fast food, meanwhile, is up 9.2% fuelled by Gen-Z consumers who are spending twice as much in the category. In more bad news for restaurants, over half of consumers surveyed are cutting down on luxuries and ‘one-off treats for themselves’.
For more of this week's headlines, click here.
