Weekly round up of social media for ChefHermes.com


This week saw the release of the Michelin France guide & another slightly less serious aspect to the French tyre maker on social media, also, how a hotel’s customer service made the news, & slightly worrying potential new legislation from Ireland.

Michelin on Twitter

So Michelin France was released this week only for one of the French superstar chefs to have one of his Parisian eateries demoted. Yes, Alain Ducasse au Plaza Athénée was reduced to 2 stars, some may say not before time, but was unceremoniously announced via Twitter. I celebrated my 30th birthday at this particular restaurant, some thirteen years ago, was far & away the best meal (& the most expensive at €900+ for two) I’ve ever had.

This said, there have been funnier goings on concerning Michelin, on Twitter they seem to have gotten themselves a parody account:

michelinNeedless to say, Michelin UK aren’t impressed:

michelin

I’d expect that one to run & run, principally because under current Twitter guidelines, the parody account isn’t actually doing anything wrong.

Customer service, a hotel that aims to please.

When Sarah Kovacs Grzywacz checked into Hotel Indigo in San Antonio-Riverwalk, she thought that she’d see how far you can take, what were assumed to be automated customer service texts.

She requested, initially a picture of the actor Nicolas Cage from Con-Air to be in her room by 6pm.

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Image from Independent Newspaper

Needless to say, it quickly escalated from there, full story here: The Independent

The World’s 50Best has some competition.

Say what you will about the World’s 50 Best Restaurant list, and I frequently do, the lack of transparency over freebies etc. and so the list goes on. Now it appears that the French have decided to launch their own version, and ‘quelle surprise’, the top ten is dominated by French chefs.

Taking the World’s 50 Best to task, the editor of the rival list, Francis Luzin said:

first accurate snapshot of the best restaurants in the world

and, the

so-called 50 best, revolted many French chefs.

Clearly missing the Achilles heal of the UK publication, Luzin then went to say that France deserved more votes because:

The British survey is based on 27 regional juries of 36 chefs and cookery writers. France, because of its strong culinary tradition, is a region of its own.

Talk about blowing your own trumpet! The full story is here: The Independent

Giles Coren slates the food scene outside of London.

This is one of those pieces when you just think that Coren, and his ilk, say things because they want publicity. There is no doubt that Coren has a way with words, but sometimes he has a case of saying something before engaging his brain. In this story on the BBC News website, Coren declares the restaurant scenes in major UK cities as:

Birmingham – just a bit rubbish

Leeds – Rubbish

Liverpool – was worse

and cemented his view by finishing with:

Honestly, if I’m going out of London to eat it’s more productive to leave the country.

Ironically, this just shows his London-centic views on eating out, as he rates Manchester restaurant scene better that Birmingham. Hmm, maybe Coren should pick up any restaurant guide to see if he can back that statement up. Michelin: Birmingham 4* vs Manchester 0, just for an example.

So it appears Coren has come over all Jay Rayner, spouting on about a subject he clearly knows very little about. Well done Giles.

Full story here on the BBC: BBC News

A worrying development in Ireland – Calorie counts on ALL menus.

Thanks to Tom Doorley for bringing this to my attention.

This week the Irish cabinet paved the way for calorie counting to be on all restaurant & takeaway menus by 2016.

When Tom tweeted about this, I immediately saw the flaw in it, replying with:

Wont make a jot of difference. Do they think that regulars @ McDonalds know the calories count in a burger?

As the giant fast food outlet has readily made nutritional information available to patrons for years. That said, James Lewis replied with this tweet.

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Personally I just think that it’s yet another piece of bureaucracy to hinder the hospitality industry, with little or no benefit, the full story here: The Journal ie

Ask, and you shall receive.

Finally a quick story about how social media can really help a chef when he’s forgotten a recipe.

Wayne Sullivan took to Twitter asking if anybody had the recipe for chocolate ganache from 2Michelin starred chef David Everitt Matthias’ book ‘Essence’.

This is what happened:

twitter

Big thanks to everybody that helped with putting this edition together, hope you enjoy it.

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