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6th March 2007
What makes a good restaurant?
(This piece first appeared in the Western Mail magazine, Saturday 25 October)
The Western Mail magazine's wine guru, Jamie Goode, who runs wineanorak.com, reveals his essential ingredients for the ideal dining out experience.
Eating out is an expensive business, so you really want to be sure of a good experience. Sadly, this doesn’t always happen. Here I’m going to sum up what I feel are the characteristics of a good restaurant.
Successful restaurants offer a seamless dining experience – you only notice what good restaurants do so well when you experience the same things going wrong in bad restaurants. So although I suspect it would be a lot easier to write about what makes a bad restaurant, I’ll try instead to pinoint what it is that makes a good one.
For me, part of the fun in eating out is the fact that it’s an unhurried social experience, with plenty of time to interact with your dining companions. There’s something about the restaurant setting that encourages relaxed conversation and enjoyment of food and wine. For this to happen, though, a number of ingredients must be in place.
First, the restaurant needs to be appropriately busy. It doesn’t need to be crammed so full that the noise level becomes intolerable, but equally there’s nothing quite as bad as being the only diners in an eerily silent room. And the tables need to be spaced far enough apart that you don’t feel you are being eavesdropped in your conversation. What creates the buzz or mood of a place is indefinable, but it’s an important factor.
Talking of noise levels, I’m aware this is quite a personal choice, but I don’t like background music when I’m dining out. Music has such an ability to colour the atmosphere of an evening it’s very hard for restaurants to get it right, and most often they don’t.
Service is a key issue. Again, it’s a question of balance, and it’s another area where you tend to notice it more if it is bad. Good service is unselfconscious, it’s unfussy and it’s appropriately attentive. I don’t want waitstaff hovering around, anxious to interrupt at the slightest nod, but then again I don’t want to have to sit there for 20 minutes before I can get someone to bring another bottle of fizzy water. I appreciate friendly service, but I don’t want wait staff to engage me in too much conversation, or be ingratiating. And I can’t bear it when the proprietor comes out and pretends I’m his best friend and most loyal customer. I’m sorry that sounds a bit mean and antisocial, but it’s true.
As in so many walks of life, timing is everything. The restaurant staff have can a major effect on the success or failure of an evening by getting the timing right or wrong. I want a gap between courses, but it’s got to be just right or things feel hurried or drawn out. Restaurants have a frustrating knack of slowing things down too much towards the end of the meal, when it can take an epoch to order coffee, and even longer to get the bill – probably my number one complaint about restaurants in general.
Restaurant wine is a contentious subject. Restaurants typically use the margins on drinks to make their profits. It’s ironic that while most of the work in a restaurant goes into preparation of the food, the margins on the raw ingredients are modest compared with that on drinks, where the only skill required is being able to pull a cork or twist a screwcap and pour.
I don’t begrudge restaurateurs their profits – they’ve got to make a living somehow – but it’s a shame that serious wine nuts are penalized more than most when eating out. A typical mark-up on restaurant wine is at least three times retail. This doesn’t hurt too much when you are buying a £5 bottle of wine for £15, but if you are plumping for something decent that would retail for £20, you’ll be paying the proprietor £40 plus just for pulling a cork.
The fact that most restaurateurs are a little embarrassed by their pricing is indicated by the fact that many merchants who specialize in supplying eateries make ‘on trade’-only brands and labels. This is so that you won’t be able to buy the same wine in Tesco or Oddbins and see just how extravagant the mark-up is.
For me, a good restaurant is one where the wine list is imaginative, with a well chosen selection of wines, and where the pricing isn’t too rapacious. Credit to any restarateur who has a sliding scale of mark-ups, with a smaller percentage on pricier bottles, so that people aren’t put off drinking more expensive wines. Many restaurants buy just from one merchant. As a result, the list has a rather formulaic feel, with a few hits and lots of misses. It’s rare to find a restaurant where much thought and work has gone into the wine list where wines have been carefully sourced from a variety of suppliers, but these are the restaurants I tend to award with my custom. I’m happy to pay a decent mark-up where I feel the owner has taken some care in choosing decent wines that match her cooking. If a restaurant can offer mature vintages of fine wines (and not just off-vintages of famous names – a typical trick to snare the less wary), then all the better. The glassware also matters: even a humble house wine can taste much more interesting out of proper generous-sized glasses.
For many restaurants, the cost of assembling and stocking a decent wine list with mature fine wines is prohibitive. This is where BYO (bring your own) comes in handy. I wouldn’t expect every restaurant to allow customers to BYO wine for free – although this is usually the case in Australia, for example – but it is a wine friendly policy to allow customers to bring special bottles by arrangement, assuming that these are not on the wine list. I’m happy to pay a corkage fee for this to make up for the restaurant’s lost profit, which depending on the restaurant could be as high as £15. But sadly most proprietors won’t even consider this, which is a shame.
I’ve saved possibly the most important aspect of the restaurant experience to last – the food. Style of food is a largely matter of taste. But whatever the style, I tend to value simple cooking with good quality ingredients over fussy and over-elaborate food. Some chefs mistake novelty for innovation, mixing in bizarre combinations of flavours. Not for me, I’m afraid. I also value authenticity: If I’m eating Italian, for instance, I don’t want some ersatz theme-park-style mock-up of an Italian restaurant with fake stylised food, but instead I’d opt for modest surroundings with genuine Italian dishes made from the best ingredients.
Most of all, I want to go to the sort of restaurant where the proprietor is passionate about food and wine, and whose primary goal is excellence, not making a fortune. Decent restaurants should be cherished and valued, and we should reward them with our custom.
19th March 2007
Mother’s Day worth over £1.5 billion to retailers
According to the British Retail Consortium, Mother’s Day could be worth over £1.5 billion this year, an increase of 8% on 2006. Around £82 million will be spent on cards, with over seven million bunches of flowers purchased at a total cost of £225 million.
BRC Director General, Kevin Hawkins, commented: “Traditional Mother’s Day gifts like flowers and chocolates will be popular again this year, along with a card, but we are also becoming a bit more adventurous with our choices too. Indoor plants are likely to be big sellers and we expect a lot of mums to be unwrapping health and beauty products and enjoying luxury food and drink hampers on Sunday morning.
“Mother’s Day is an important day for families and it is increasing in importance for retailers as well. With competition between stores fierce at the moment and with plenty of outlets looking to stand out from the crown there are plenty of opportunities to thank mum with something special.”
20 march 2007
Cash-raising scheme to fund expansion at Coffee Republic
Coffee Republic has announced that director Brian Carroll will be stepping down from the board with effect from today and will be leaving the company ahead of a cash-generation scheme that will raise £935,000, prior to expenses. In a statement, Coffee Republic said: “Mr Carroll remains a strong supporter of the company and the brand but has decided to pursue other entrepreneurial activities and the board wishes him well.” Coffee Republic also recently employed Alan Ainsworth to act as international franchise director ahead of an aggressive international franchise expansion plan which will be in part funded by net proceeds of a placing and open offer involving 6.6% of the company’s shares, as well as the decision by Peter Breach, chairman and Steven Bartlett, chief executive, to take their remuneration in a share incentive form rather than salary. Commenting, Peter Breach, chairman, said: “I am much encouraged by the volume and calibre of both domestic and international opportunities becoming available to the company. This injection of funds will assist the company to develop the brand more quickly and hasten the delivery of value to the shareholders.”
28th March 2007
Ten Terrific Tips for On Page Optimisation
When developing a search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy there are two main factors to consider;
'On page optimisation' and 'off page optimisation'.
We will focus on on page optimisation for this tutorial. The term on page optimisation covers the SEO strategies that are utilised within your specific web page, in your HTML code. Whilst your on page optimisation will not skyrocket your web page into the top of the Google search results, if you have comprehensively covered your off page and on page optimisation you shouldn't have too much trouble getting a good Google ranking. However, it is actually possible to get yourself into the Google results with no off page optimisation if your on page optimisation is done correctly and the keywords you have optimised for are not extremely popular, ie; 'pizza shop Newcastle' instead of 'pizza'. Ok here goes:
1. First and foremost, make sure you are going to optimise your web page for the most appropriate keywords, there is a very handy search term suggestion tool located at: http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/.
It is important to choose your keywords wisely, especially keeping in mind how often those specific keywords are searched for, as it will be much easier and beneficial to get your site as a number one search result for a phrase that is searched for 5,000 times a week, and almost impossible to get your page in the first few search result pages for a term that is searched for 500,000 times a week. It is important to note that approximately 90% of web users do not navigate past the first page of Google's search results.
2. Secondly, ensure your keywords appear once (more than once is not necessary) in your meta tags in your HTML code. For example, if the only keywords you are optimising for are 'pizza shop Newcastle' your meta tags should read as follows:
3. Thirdly, ensure your keywords appear in your title tag of your web page, ie; Harry's Pizza's - Pizza Shop Newcastle
4. Fourth, ensure your keywords appear in a heading (<) h1 (>) tag in the specific page. ie; (<) h1 (>) Pizza Shop Newcastle. It is more beneficial if this is your only h1 tag on the page, and it occurs only once.
5. Another factor that affects your on page optimisation is if your keywords appear within bolded or italicized text. It is important not to go overboard with this by having your keywords bolded or italicized everywhere throughout your page because Google will consider this a 'black hat' method of on page optimisation and may result in banning your site from their index. But if it occurs once, or maybe twice, it will increase your on page optimisation and Google will not frown upon this. Example: Pizza Shop Newcastle
6. It is important to have your keywords occur at least once within the content text on your website, within paragraph < p > tags. And is more beneficial to ensure this occurs closest to the top of your web page, and at the bottom.
7. It also helps to put your keywords within the alt tags of the images that are embedded in your HTML file. A good example would be if you have a logo that occurs at the top of the document, put the keywords in the alt text.
8. If you have any links within your web site that link back to the page you are optimising, or any external links that link towards your web site it is very important to contain your keywords within the anchor text and the title text. Example: Harry's Pizzas - Pizza Shop Newcastle. The anchor text is the text that occurs within the tags. Hover over the link to view the title text that pops up, or click on view -> source in your web browser if you need to brush up on your HTML skills.
9. Other factors that improve your on page optimisation include having your keywords contained within your domain name and file name of the specific page. For example the following fictional url would help: http://www.harryspizzashopnewcastle.com.au/pizzashopnewcastle.html. However this is not 100% necessary.
10. This point is probably the most important point you should consider when optimising your page- stay away from 'black hat' on page optimisation methods. They may increase your on page optimisation temporarily but Google frowns upon this and could ban you from their index. So if you go over board with keywords that do not relate to the content of the page, have your keywords occurring more than 3 or 4 times in (<)h1(>) tags and < b > tags all over your site and repeat your keywords unnecessarily throughout the content text of your web site, you risk having your site banned from the Google index. Google really does keep a close eye on this so be careful.
About the Author: This article was written by Justin Daniel, who currently works at NFX Web Design, a small web design business located in Newcastle, Australia.
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A reciprocal link is a mutual link between two objects, commonly between two websites in order to ensure mutual traffic.
Website owners often submit their websites to reciprocal link exchange directories in order to achieve higher rankings in the search engines.
Reciprocal linking between websites became an important part of the search engine optimisation process thanks to the link popularity algorithm PageRank employed by Google, which ranks websites for relevancy dependent on the number of links that led to a particular page and the anchor text of the link.
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