UK’s star chefs get creative to keep menu prices down
The restaurateur Stuart Gillies is running an unusual cocktail of the week: a delicious-looking Monte Cassino. But what’s that got to do with the price of fish?
Everything, as it turns out. Gillies, who ran Gordon Ramsay’s restaurant empire for seven years, is using less popular spirits to create something special on a creative menu aimed at saving him and his diners some money. And the same applies to the food. Soaring fish prices have meant he has taken salmon, cod and sea bream off the menu and replaced them with mackerel and hake.
He is one of hundreds of chefs and restaurateurs up and down the country who, faced with crippling increases in the price of ingredients and staff shortages, are being forced to rethink their menus and take other cost-saving measures before the summer holiday season. Celebrated chefs including Tom Kerridge, Mitch Tonks and Razak Helalat have told the Observer they are having to either shut their doors a few days a week, trim staff hours or swap key ingredients in their dishes.
“Our costs had gone up 20% so we were putting up prices,” Gillies said. “It was crazy. We can’t just keep going up. So I decided to drop prices, and do a zero waste policy.”
The bar at his restaurant, Bank House in Chislehurst, Kent, is creating a new cocktail every week with spirits that people rarely drink: in the case of the Monte Cassino, benedictine and yellow chartreuse. Wine from opened bottles is used for a tasting selection. Trimmings go in soups, sauces and pies. And while lobster and chateaubriand are still on the menu, other ingredients have been substituted, and prices are back at 2019 levels.
“Salmon was crazy money,” Gillies said. A smoked salmon salad has become a smoked mackerel salad. “It’s still a
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