OK, I’m a Frenchman, and in France eating out is just part of life, something everybody does pretty often. But guess what, the British have caught up. Now not only do you eat as much garlic as we French do, but you eat it in restaurants. It’s official: “Cultural changes in food consumption, with people eating out more regularly and enjoying a wider range of cuisine, continue to have an impact on the UK economy,” says the National Statistics Online website. Indeed the headline to this says, “Eating out overtakes meals at home.”
This is fantastic news so far as I’m concerned, because in all my professional life, what I’ve tried to do is to export a little of my own culture to Britain, where I live. And because I’m French that means food, and because of our democratic republican ethos, in which food is valued much the same by everyone of us, that means promoting good food, and enjoyable eating out, at all levels. So Brasserie Blanc is very important to me.
What I have enjoyed enormously is crafting the Brasserie Blanc brand, which is so close to my heart. We’ve shown at Brasserie Blanc that you can have great food, ethically sourced, and of wonderful quality, and also we’ve been able to offer our guests one of the best deals in the country. What people may not know is that even before the recession, in fact for the last four years, we’ve managed to offer our terrific value Dine with Wine menu. Two delicious courses of absolutely fresh, seasonal food, with a glass of lovely wine from the Languedoc, a choice of Domaine St Jean Conques VDP d’Oc 2005 or Château St Chinian Merlot VDP d’Oc 2006. This affordability is the core value of Brasserie Blanc. This great value has meant that more of our guests can come more often – not just for a special birthday or wedding anniversary, but for a night out with the kids – we love having children, of all ages, in our restaurants (that’s a French thing, too), and we have special menus for them, as well.
Of course the recession has created a new breed of customer, streetwise, knowledgeable and demanding. And, thanks to the foodie revolution in Britain, this customer now has lots of choice that he didn’t have in the past. And as the customer knows his food, the chef will also have to know more than just his onions. He’ll have to learn, re-learn or practise his butchery skills, how to break down an animal and use the cuts that used to be chucked away. He’ll have to reconnect with his knowledge of marine life too, and discover how delicious pollack, grey mullet and the many other under-utilised species can be.
This can be a great gift to the chef, giving him a new versatility – and it’s interesting to learn new things. This also gives him the opportunity to pass on to his guests the benefits of new tastes and flavours, along with the benefit of saving some money. To get the most out of his new buying habits, the chef will have to try to shop locally as much as possible, and so help to reinvent his own region – to make a new sense of place for himself and his customers. These are really positive gains we can make from a good, old-fashioned recession.
We mustn’t seem triumphalist; we know the recession’s not over, but I really want to pay a tribute to the team for their hard work and the pride they take in knowing they’re part of something good. Thanks to our executive chef, Clive Fretwell, who’s worked with me for 23 years now, and to all the branch managers, and to our eagle-eyed managing director, John Lederer, we’ve been able to watch our pennies, without sacrificing anything of the distinction of our food, our wine, or the warmth of service that we hope marks us out.
