italia v pseudo italians

Here I am after sixteen years in the restaurant trade and twenty five in catering writing on a blog, if someone had said to me back then that this is what I would be doing in the future I would of told them where to go in Italian!

Looking back when people used to go out dining and restaurants were busy because of word of mouth, this is now being replaced by people who have no time, so they find their new place on the web which is fantastic.

Before talking about planet franchise I want to say thank you to all my former ITALIAN chefs Raffaele, Davide, Enzo, Gigi and Mario, with these professional boys we started a new way of cooking in 1991 and put this town on the map for authentic regional Italian cuisine giving the opportunity to taste different dishes and new menu's, looking back can you imagine serving sun dried tomato rocket salad, roasted fennel risotto with pumpkin and many more, for some customer's it was a new experience, I remember their was no supermarket beside's sainsbury's and you were lucky to find some Italian produce, my disappointment goes to those who had the chance to taste some authentic dishes but for some reason maybe my location saying that warrington is not exactly in the chiantishire perhaps some people were just not prepared to experience new food's, or maybe we were to ahead for that type of cuisine, in fact I remember very little choice in restaurants but hundreds of takeaways. I knew one day this type of company would come to Warrington so in 2004 yes in 2004 they open introducing new dishes sun dry tomato rocket salad, roasted fennel and risotto with pumpkin, exactly fifteen years later served in large plate's, no table cloth small portions and charging a fortune £ 4.50 for a glass of wine! never mind the financial crunch seems to me that these guys have discovered the new eating fashion, I go along with Gordon Ramsey his view is to keep food nice and simple, absolutely agree .

I would like to ask those people who have been to Italy, France or even Spain if they have seen any chain restaurant? be side's the one on the motorways and MC Donald's, the answer is NO and why aren't there any? because Italian, French and the rest of Mediterranean are not prepared to be ripped off, they like to know who owns the restaurant and there approach to food is completely different, before talking about Italian or Mediterranean franchise business's in UK I would like to spend a word for the biggest chain MC DONALD'S, a few years ago in a small town in Puglia a little food and bakery shop forced this big chain to closed down, the young people in the town found the regional food more attractive and healthy of course, this fast food company as the courage to call them selves 'restaurants' on their television adverts, these in my world are NOT RESTAURANTS just bad food house's.

Back to my topic, I think their is a large quantity of people that are not interested if the actual food has been cooked by Italian chefs as long as it's trendy it doesn't matter, the truth is that in most of these franchise's their isn't a shadow of a Italian chef and probably they are not even interested to employ one beside's why would a professional chef, well paid in Italy want to leave Lake Garda ,Tuscany or Venice to work for these guys who pay peanuts and get monkeys as they say in England, in fact most of the staff now are from eastern Europe come with little professionality, only interested in the money with lack of catering experience but customer's still paying high price's for poor service unfortunately people keep going back, I still don't understand, maybe someone can blog me on this one!

There are more fake Italian restaurant's in the UK then anywhere else, how would you feel if you walk in to a Chinese and a tanned Italian comes to your table, do you expect him to speak Cantonese, obviously not, so this is exactly my point most people go to these places probably with out even thinking about Italy, then complain because it's not authentic or not to the standard, not long ago in the press I read that Italian food is now the most popular cuisine in UK but only a fraction of British people have actually been there to taste the authenticity, so that means a lot of people never experience the Italian life style and food there!

A few years ago a good friend of mine took his family in to a Chain restaurant in knutsford Cheshire, as they walked into the restaurant with a lady in a wheel chair, a member of their staff very abruptly said "where are we going to put her now"! How embarrassing, this kind of attitude reflects on the Italian trade mark leaving a bad reputation and negative feedback on real Italian's, everyone knows how hospitable we are. and caring about this business?

There is nothing we can do as authentic Italians, the market want this type of establishment putting more press ion on small restaurant's run by independent owner's, unfortunately the UK has adopted the American strategy, fast food and franchise, quick turn over little time for the customers, its a disaster and a defeat in a way.

My last thought is for all the remaining few Italian owner's, don't let the romance go, how we say it in Italy "chi la dura la vince DA NICO RISTORANTE ".