‘If
you’re not hungry, don’t go’: London restaurateur fights back against cheap
diners
Chef Hugh
Corcoran had enough of ‘window dining’ after seeing an increase in guests
splitting main courses
Morwenna
Ferrier
Sat 9 Nov
2024 03.00 EST
Shortly
after opening his north London restaurant, Hugh Corcoran noticed a pattern
among some of his diners: large groups ordering tap water, starters and mains
to share. So, he took to social media. “Restaurants are not public benches,” he
wrote on his Instagram last week. “You are there to spend money.”
By the
weekend, his post had accrued 150 comments, some accusing him of being tone
deaf, others in agreement. Either way, a discourse was born.
The
Belfast-born chef opened The Yellow Bittern three weeks ago. It has three
members of staff, seats 18 people, and is only open for lunch on weekdays. If
you want to book a table, you phone the landline or send a postcard. Curiously,
it’s not on Instagram.
This early
in its life, it should be in no position to change the way we eat. And yet
thanks to its famous pies (“we do pies when we fancy doing pies”), his
predilection for the long boozy lunch, and its old-fashioned set up – it’s also
cash only – Corcoran is attracting and dividing diners who take umbrage with
being told there is a right way to have lunch.
“There’s an
etiquette everywhere – theatres, bars – simple manners. You don’t talk in a
cinema, and you go to a restaurant when you’re ready to eat, as a treat,” he
says. “If you’re not hungry, don’t go.”
His
preference, he says, is minimum one plate per person, “but one starter and two
mains between four, that’s just not acceptable”.
This is a
fraught time for new restaurants. Years of work go into funding. Then there are
soaring food prices. Add to that the current climate for hospitality: an
estimated 60% close within their first year. So why is Corcoran angering his
diners?
He does
reservations by phone because “in London, everyone got into the ‘just in case’
craze – booking online and then cancelling”. The cash-only policy is the last
vestige of privacy. That, and atmosphere. “Cards leave out interesting people
in society who are cash-in-hand. Frankly, I’d also prefer it if clients didn’t
use their phones.”
The real
issue, he says, lies in “restaurant tourism – going to a place to show that
you’ve been to that place, without actually eating”. That, and what’s known as
“window dining”.
Two recent
diners, he says, ordered half the menu, took photographs but didn’t touch the
food. “It all went in the bin,” he says. “We don’t want to force-feed people.
And you can share food. But if I’m going to get stick for standing against
that, so be it.”
Jan Ostle
runs Wilson’s, a small but critically acclaimed farm-to-table restaurant in
Bristol, which opened in 2016. “Sometimes people come in and only order a main,
and all your projections get mangled,” he agrees. “The problem is, people want
to go out and feel rich but they can’t afford to do it.”
“Most
restaurants today have to traverse two lines – firstly as a local restaurant
with regulars, and secondly as a destination one,” says Ostle. “It’s nice to
have both, which we do. But if someone comes in, takes photographs and doesn’t
seem fussed on the food, that’s the modern world. You need a thick skin for
it.”
Annie Gray,
a food historian, blames Covid – and years of austerity – for the divide.
“People have become entitled. Hospitality has been hard hit – Covid, austerity,
cost of living crisis, the overseas labour. But diners don’t necessarily care
because they’ve been through it too, and they’re spending money,” she says.
This is not
lost on Corcoran. In the end, he just doesn’t want to see people eating
nothing, but photographing everything.
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