Since our event at the Club at the Ivy a couple of weeks ago work on the inaugural London Restaurant Festival has gathered pace with encouraging briskness.
The heady degree of enthusiasm for the festival from all quarters is now being matched with hard graft from the team here to ensure that we not only give London’s restaurateurs a great boon but also offer Londoners, and visitors to our great capital, the most engaging and satisfying restaurant festival possible in year one.
As one of the aims of this blog is to keep you updated with our progress I plan to post regularly.
I had a great lunch with Chris Hughes on Tuesday. Chris is the man behind the successful Taste events and I’m pleased to say is now one of the partners in the London Restaurant Festival.
We are extremely pleased to have him and his team – particularly Taste editorial director Tess Willmott – on board. Tess joined us for lunch along with our festival manager Penny Smith and we discussed the possibilities for Taste’s event during the first London Restaurant festival in October. There were several new and exciting ideas batted around and we’ll let you know specifics further down the line.
We also agreed that the London Restaurant Festival would have a colourful presence at the main Taste event in Regent’s Park that takes place this year June 18-21. On that, tickets are now on sale for this event. See www.tastefestivals.com
I also spent some valuable hours with another of our key partners this week. Visit London are an integral part of the London Restaurant Festival and one of their contribution to date has been the construction of this superb website. Of course, this site as it stands is just an hors d’oeuvre compared to the slap-up offering that is now under construction.
I sat down with Julie Chappell, the head of media at Visit London, and Joanna Tatti, the technical project manager, to methodically go through all of the content, functionality and so forth of the website. Work is now underway to build a site that will serve as the ‘mother ship’ for the London Restaurant Festival and it will launch in July.
They are an extremely impressive and professional team and we are lucky to have them supporting us.
I popped into the RSVP show at the Business Design Centre in Islington as Tim Etchells had asked if I would speak on why restaurants make good venues for entertaining clients and corporate events.
Tim is a founding partner of the London Restaurant Festival and his company Single Market Events Ltd runs RSVP and also London Fashion Week and the British Motor Show among others. He’s arguably the most experienced figure in events management in the country so Fay and I are extremely pleased that he’s seen fit to support the London Restaurant Festival in such an integral way.
The following day I visited a particularly interesting event. Earlier in the week I got chatting to a man on my train to London. He is called Bryan Toye and his company – Toye, Kenning and Spencer – is a distinguished livery company established in 1645. He’s also a prominent figure in the Royal Warrant Holders Association.
We got onto the subject of the London Restaurant Festival – my ability to re-direct any conversation onto one about the festival is becoming finely tuned – and he mentioned a food and drink fair taking place in London at which all those taking part shared the privilege of holding a royal warrant.
This struck me as a rather ingenious idea so I went along last Thursday. It was being held in Victoria and was only quietly promoted at the request of the royal household. Despite this, word soon got about, the sun shone and the place was buzzing with people scoffing their way through the most delicious sausages from HM The Queen’s favourite sausage maker from Newmarket, breads for Partridge’s, truffles from Prestat and cheeses from Paxton and Whitfield. There were about 30 stalls.
It was the first time such an event had taken place and not only was it intriguing to see what HM The Queen and HRH The Prince of Wales like to eat but also to discover some suppliers I had no knowledge of.
I had a chat with the people who created the event as I think there may be scope for a similar one during the London Restaurant Festival. We shall see.
Other possible events were explored this week during a visit to Sister, a PR company on Carnaby St who look after that area and also Regent’s St.
We discussed an event focused on Ganton St that is now almost exclusively made up of restaurants and also a new take on a Mad Hatter’s Tea party inspired by David Bowie on Heddon Street. Watch this space.
So, busy times. I’m now off to see Mark Wogan, a former chef, passionate foodie and son of Sir Terry, who is an enthusiastic supporter of the London Restaurant Festival and tells me he has some ideas for events. I’ll let you know about that, and much more besides in my next blog.
Please do get all the people you know to register on www.londonrestaurantfestival.com and also tell your favourite restaurants to get in touch and get involved.
