The most popular topic of conversation is rarely the most fashionable, a fact that became apparent earlier this month as I moved into a new flat and hit the shops. It was my first time in a while buying such essentials as salt, pepper and olive oil, having moved home temporarily this winter and relied on the kindness of parents. The bill hurt.
Call it frequency illusion if you wish, but the primary chatter at the Frieze art fairs seemed to be about groceries. Art is a glamorous field, poorly paid. A friend at Christie’s lamented the cost of seafood as another mourned a client who recently moved his business to Europe. Poorly paid, and dwindling.
A few chefs are countering ingredient costs with lower menu prices: a counterintuitive move that has nonetheless paid dividends.
- True to the creed she championed when she opened Café Murano's first venue 13 years ago, Angela Hartnett is offering a glass of wine and bowl of London's best pasta for £25 in all three locations (St James's, Borough, Marylebone) from Monday to Friday.
- The Camberwell Arms has reduced the size — and price — of its beloved pie, and introduced a set-lunch menu (two courses for £20), its most successful lunchtime offering in 12 years.
- Wilson's in Bristol offers lunch at £39 and dinner at £78, making it one of the country's most affordable Michelin-star restaurants.
- The Negronis at Brutto and Bar Etna still cost only £5.
Most revealing was the absence of queues for Frieze’s usually thriving pop-up restaurants. I witnessed many punters commit the ultimate art-fair sin — eating a Pret sandwich — and realised that even high-earners now consider £18.50 for silken tofu to be a bit much. The strain felt by diners and the establishments that feed them has seeped into their relationship. How, I asked chefs, do you negotiate between staff asking for better pay, diners demanding better food and suppliers hiking prices as they deal with import and fuel costs?
Margot Henderson, doyenne of Rochelle Canteen in Shoreditch and The Three Horseshoes in Somerset, has a few ideas. Her kitchens, she reveals, will buy a whole cow and butcher it in-house, ‘so a fillet costs the same as a shank’, serve smaller cocktails ‘so the ice doesn’t melt by the time it’s finished’ and ‘use less butter than before’. Seasonal ingredients, she adds, are equally important, reducing reliance on imports and preservatives and lending rural growers a hand.
Yet where such cost-saving measures are usually boosted by mark-ups, certain restaurateurs will opt instead for menu discounts. Gabriel Waterhouse’s new venture, a restaurant inside a potters’ shop in Hackney, offers a seven-course tasting menu for £70 on Sunday afternoon, down from £125. ‘How else do you make your business attractive when people are spending less money?’ the chef asks. Being full on Sundays, he adds, boosts staff morale and sends the right message to passers-by on the day with the most footfall.
By contrast, those who keep prices high in fear of adding to losses may struggle. It pays to be counterintuitive, says Flora McTeare, co-owner of Soho’s Khao Bird, which serves a cocktail inspired by its own bartenders called the ‘I am broke’. ‘It must be the only cocktail in London to admit to using Lidl vodka,’ she says. Honesty may yet be the best policy.