How to make up for not going to restaurants

‘God I miss restaurants!’ has been the plaintive cry on Twitter from quite a few of us lately. This lockdown makes me realise how often I normally eat out and how much I enjoy the warm, welcoming buzz of my favourite places. Not to mention those cosy suppers huddled with friends round the kitchen table.

Given that we’ve got to be socially distanced for the foreseeable future and that nobody knows when restaurants will be open again we need something to look forward to in order to survive. And I think I’ve nailed it.

Like everyone else I’ve discovered Zoom but instead of just using it for online drinks (fun though that is) I’ve been cooking and eating with friends I’ve previously cooked with in real life.

Cooking on Zoom

The first experiment was over the Easter weekend when a group of us made my Guardian colleague Rachel Roddy’s Torta Pasqualina, a celebratory spinach, egg ricotta pie. Understandably Rachel chose not to hang out with us online while we made it - would you want your recipe picked over by a group of food writers? - but joined us for a drink afterwards while we proudly showed off our results. (The very light, crisp pastry, which also contains ricotta, is particularly good.) I will definitely make it for Easter again.

A week or so later two other friends and I had a go at a couple of recipes in Ben Tish’s Moorish, the stuffed piquillo peppers with brandade and stuffed aubergines with almonds and preserved lemon - the first time I’ve ever made brandade. (Yes, it did involve a lot of stuffing, including stuffing our faces.)

Another small group I'm involved with tackled Sami Tamimi’s lovely new book Falastin, making the really excellent muhammara (roasted red pepper and walnut dip below) and koftas with tahini and potato. Meanwhile Group 1 had a go at his cauliflower and cumin fritters (another winner) and seared seabass with lemon and tomato sauce.

The rules of the game are that you decide on a book then discuss which dishes to make. Obviously that’s limited by your skills - my friends are all keen cooks - whether you have, or can get access to the book and what ingredients you have available. My friend Fi for example lives on the Isle of Wight which would make a Korean cooking session, say, challenging while having no outdoor space I couldn’t do a barbecue - let alone manage the practicalities of broadcasting from the garden. But you can always improvise and substitute ingredients - and we did.

Another bonus is the general cooking tips you pick up just in the course of chatting: storing your walnuts - or other nuts - in the fridge or freezer so they don’t go rancid, for example. And often individual elements of a recipe are as useful as the recipe itself. The simple orange and thyme oil, Ben Tish suggests to drizzle over the brandade-stuffed peppers really makes the dish. Sami Tamimi's idea of blitzing a tin of tomatoes in a blender or food processor - richer flavoured and cheaper than using passata - is genius. And, also from Sami, roasting potatoes on baking parchment so they don’t stick to the baking tray.

Then there’s the useful and reassuring process of comparing notes on timings and textures. 'Hey, does this look right? you can ask your mates showing them on-screen though preferably avoiding spilling the juice you’ve carefully strained off a grated tomato onto your laptop. Fortunately I seem to have got away with it.

In terms of numbers I reckon three or four is ideal for Zoom's Gallery View. With a bigger group than that you can’t really follow the conversation or see what’s going on. Or it could just be the two of you. I’m planning a meal with a couple of friends this Saturday based on the kind of food we’d eat if I was staying with them for the weekend, the cookbooks in this case being two established favourites, Diana Henry's From the Oven to the Table and Sabrina Ghayour's Bazaar.

Although it’s fun to cook something that stretches you, there's no reason why you shouldn't cook something as simple as a plate of pasta. I'm plotting a carbonara night with a couple of pals to recreate a fun evening we had at a wonderfully retro Italian restaurant just before lockdown when we downed a classy couple of bottles from the Burgundy tasting we'd been to beforehand. One other consolation, you can at least do BYO under lockdown - no hefty restaurant markups!)

An alternative approach is to eat with your friends but not actually cook with them. Fellow sherry fan Elly Curshen came up with the genius idea of #finofriday for which we made our own food in advance. That could take the pressure off if you don’t feel that confident about your cooking skills or are a bit of a tortoise like me. We’re planning a French-themed follow-up next week in memory of the late, lamented Bar Buvette which I imagine will include charcuterie, cornichons and cheese toasties.

Is your local restaurant online?

You may also find your favourite restaurant online. Owen Morgan, the owner of my local tapas bar, Bar 44, for instance is making videos showing how to make croquetas and their legendary patatas bravas while Freddy Bird of littlefrench did a hilarious cooking demo with TV producer and drink writer Andy Clarke last night showing how to make his awesome roast guineafowl with olives, aioli and chips. For restaurants it’s a good way of keeping the relationship with their customers going. (If you live in Bristol you can still buy ingredients from littlefrench)

It all helps to make up for not being able to go out despite the fact that the endless shopping, chopping, clearing and washing up is a bit of a nightmare. ('Why can’t you just tidy up as you go along?' my husband used to ask plaintively when he walked into a kitchen that looked as if a bomb had hit it.) 'Because I’m concentrating on the FOOD' I used to say. I still am, to my cost.

Please come back soon, restaurants. We miss you.

The top image is not me but a stock image from Marina Andrejchenko at Adobe Stock whose copyright this is.

Why it matters if you don’t show up for a restaurant you’ve booked

Every week my local restaurants in Bristol tweet that a table has become available that evening. You might say they’re the lucky ones - at least the customer has let them know though that’s scant consolation if the table is for more than two. Others simply fail to show up.

No shows have become the bane of restaurants’ lives, cutting already slender margins to the bone. Expensive ingredients go to waste. Regulars you’d like to fit in may be denied a table. One restaurant told me this morning that only a third of the people who had booked a table one evening turned up.

Since when did we become so careless of people’s livelihoods or frankly so selfish? People seem to feel they have the right to book a number of places then see what they feel like on the day. Without bothering to let the other restaurants know. Would they do that to a family member or a friend? To a work colleague they’d arranged to meet? Almost certainly not yet how long does it take to make a phone call? Seconds.

What can restaurants do about no shows?

What on earth can restaurants do? Charge beforehand like a theatre, cinema or sporting venue? Most hotels will charge you for a night’s accommodation if you cancel in 24 hours. Only a very small minority of highly regarded restaurants like The Clove Club in London and Casamia in Bristol do.

Even asking for a deposit appears to deter customers. One chef who tried it said his trade fell right off. Customers simply decided to eat elsewhere. What about collaborating with other local restaurants I asked him? “A few of us agreed to do it but I was the only one who gave it a try. Business was disastrous. I had to give it up after a couple of weeks”

Name and shame as The Cauldron in Bristol did yesterday? It might well be effective but restaurants still hesitate to do it in case the cancellation is genuine - and for fear of what damage sites like Tripadvisor can do if the disgruntled customer complains. Yes, everyone has to rush to hospital with a sick child at some point but at least get someone to call to say you can’t make it.

It’s up to all of us who value our local restaurants to try and help with this problem otherwise they’ll simply go out of business. And it’s the rest of us who end up paying in terms of higher meal costs that have to be factored in

So If you have to cancel give as much notice as possible, preferably a couple of days.

Don’t double or treble-book

If someone else has made the booking for you and you can’t make it, make sure they let the restaurant know. If they brag about having booked several restaurants make them aware just how damaging that is to a restaurateur's livelihood

Local restaurants band together to make people aware of the cost of not turning up and share a blacklist of repeat offenders. (I personally think you should name and shame but can understand why you hesitate.)

Local media, don’t automatically assume the customer is right - check the complaint is genuine. (Good to see the Bath Chronicle highlighting the problem today.) Tripadvisor (if anyone bothers to monitor Tripadvisor) why not be a little more careful about blatantly spiteful posts?

Local councils and business organisations - support your local restaurant sector by highlighting this problem

Booking sites could also do more to support restaurants like OpenTable's #bookresponsibly campaign. They also have a detailed No Show policy.

Let’s say #notonoshows

In the hour or so since I posted it there have been reports that no shows were a particular problem this Valentine's night. Top Bath restaurateur Gordon Jones said he had 47 people on his waiting list who he was unable to accommodate then had 4 customers fail to show up. Bar 44 in Cardiff had a worse experience still - it had 16 tables who didn't turn up

If you’re a restaurant have you had experience of no-shows and what have they cost you? Any thoughts about what the industry can do about it? One interesting idea that's come from the exchange of views on Twitter might be that customers who paid a deposit or, better still, the full cost up front (a possibly solution to V day no shows) might get a discount. Worth thinking about ...

How Parisiens learned to love vegetables, foreign chefs, natural wine and even their customers

3 days in Paris so far and I can report that the city is changing. Fast. Of course it’s been happening for a while but there’s a critical mass in terms of the number of restaurants which are offering a very different experience to those that established Paris's reputation as a gastronomic destination.

The restaurants about which there is the greatest buzz have a number of things in common. They serve vegetables - lots of them. They are often staffed by foreign chefs, particularly Japanese, and front of house staff who are - almost unheard of in Paris at one time - polite and solicitous. And they serve natural wine which - please note, sneerling sceptics in the wine trade - their largely young clientele totally takes in its stride.

Le Fooding - the new bible for on-trend foodies loves them, singling out places like Le Servan, Les Déserteurs and Clown Bar for their ‘palmares’ or accolades of the year.

The interesting thing is that it’s vegetables that make the economics of this new generation of restaurants viable. Last night I returned to Les Déserteurs, a restaurant we’d greatly enjoyed on a flying visit to Paris back in October. The restaurant is tiny - just over 20 covers, I’m guessing - so there is just one, no-choice fixed price menu from which you can take 4 courses for 45€ or 6 for 60€. The only expensive ingredient on it last night was grouse but they’re only serving half a bird a person (the breast with the leg elegantly turned into a perfectly seasoned ‘caillette’ (faggot). The first course was based on hispi cabbage (right) the second on assorted root veg and the final one - an immaculate tarte tatin - on apples. I’d be surprised if the cost of the ingredients was more than 12€.

That is not a complaint. The ingredients were handled with consummate skill using contrasting tastes, colours and textures to create a meal that was every bit as satisfying as one containing ingredients twice the price.

The food is backed up by an excellent and imaginative wine list that you feel is driven by a desire to serve wines that are truly interesting rather than ones on which they could make the greatest profit margin.

Other restaurants - on which I’ll be reporting at the end of the week - follow a similar pattern - or, like Au Passage, adopt the popular small plates formula which, given that prices here include service, makes for affordable eating for the customer too.

It represents a seismic shift in the French restaurant scene in response to the new generation of diners with an interest in healthier food and drink who now form the majority of restaurant customers

Alain Passard tried some 10 years ago to base his restaurant on vegetables. He was before his time but what he attempted to do - and is now doing with renewed success - is mainstream these days. Maybe we should call this new phenomenon Passardisme?

Main image credit: Chris Molloy

Hidden Bath: The White Hart, Widcombe

You might well assume from the name of this pub that it’s just outside Bath - as I did, jumping into a taxi then being told it was less than 5 minutes walk away.*

It’s on the other side of the station in what amounts to a small village, well off the tourist track.

It doesn’t look much from the outside then you notice a window full of Michelin endorsements. Inside there are the statutory scrubbed pine tables and mismatching chairs of any gastropub.

We shared pre-starters of homemade hummus and a coarse, chunky flavourful pesto then a very good plate of fresh gurnard and aioli (my pick) and duck confit and chips in the case of my publishers Absolute Press who think sufficiently highly of the place they’re having their Christmas lunch there.

The cheeseboard wasn’t much to write home about and the one dessert (a chocolate brownie) a little fussily presented so I’d stick to the starters and mains. But it's a useful place to know about if you’re staying in Bath and want to get away from the crowds.

Learn more: The White Hart

*Facing the station turn left under the tunnel, across the footbridge and diagonally across the road up along Claverton Street to the bottom of Widcombe HIll.

For a more comprehensive round-up of Bath restaurants check out this excellent post from Dan Vaux-Nobes of Essex Eating.

Image source: whitehartbath