It was a challenging year, but the best places led by shining example
Wouldn’t it be lovely if a look back at a year’s restaurant-going could get stuck into the good stuff straight away? If I could, say, just perv elegantly over the clever, vaguely indecent things that were done to hispi cabbage? But a consideration of the hospitality business in 2022 has to begin by acknowledging that restaurants were trading into brutal, wing-stripping economic headwinds. As restaurants serve as a replacement for the domestic, it makes sense that everything that affects us at home also affects them. Energy and ingredient cost rises have simply been punishing. Restaurateurs have also had to deal with wage inflation. Even if they could pay those increased salaries, staff weren’t always available for employment. The result has been a profound shortening of opening hours. Many ambitious places have dumped à la carte menus that they don’t have the bodies to execute, for tasting menus, yours for big bucks.
Consider Richoux on London’s Piccadilly. I loved their classic brasserie menu of prawn cocktails and steak frites and tarte tatins when I reviewed it in March. I especially liked the prices. Oh, the difference six months makes. Onion soup was £6.95; now it’s £10.50. Salmon à la plancha was £15.95; now it’s £22.95. Tarte tatin was £7.95; now it’s £12.95. Given its prime location, it’s still not appallingly expensive, but it’s certainly not the great value it originally was. Many of you have been there and told me how great it is, so there’s that, too. But it’s tough out there. If you can still afford to eat out, you really will be helping the hospitality sector get through one of the roughest patches in history.
