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When I first skimmed an email announcement of London's first forthcoming Restaurant Week (8-13 October), I anticipated a version of Toronto's Summerlicious/Winterlicious, a week of appealing, radically discounted menus to entice those with budgets and those willing to sample new restaurants into dabbling for a week.
It's not. Instead, it will be offering an intriguing but much less accessible program of events. £135 for a three course meal at three different top-end restaurants, including transport between courses. £40 or £50 for a roast dinner at trestle tables, the cooking done by big name chefs. The few "special offer" menus I attempted to browse through were all variations on "eat here on a particular night of the week and you can lucky dip for your food to be free". At these prices, the only thing that really appealed was a one-week-only recreation of a long-closed three Michelin star restaurant, La Tante Claire, on top of Selfridge's, with lots of original - now well-established - chefs coming back to cook for it. There, at least, there's going to be some control over how much I spend and what I spend it on; and I trust the value for money more too.
I would have called it something like "Fine Dining Week" so there was more clarity in advertising. Accessible, this is not.
It's not. Instead, it will be offering an intriguing but much less accessible program of events. £135 for a three course meal at three different top-end restaurants, including transport between courses. £40 or £50 for a roast dinner at trestle tables, the cooking done by big name chefs. The few "special offer" menus I attempted to browse through were all variations on "eat here on a particular night of the week and you can lucky dip for your food to be free". At these prices, the only thing that really appealed was a one-week-only recreation of a long-closed three Michelin star restaurant, La Tante Claire, on top of Selfridge's, with lots of original - now well-established - chefs coming back to cook for it. There, at least, there's going to be some control over how much I spend and what I spend it on; and I trust the value for money more too.
I would have called it something like "Fine Dining Week" so there was more clarity in advertising. Accessible, this is not.