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The Food Programme

What's Eating The Restaurant Trade?

The Food Programme

BBC

Food, Arts

4.4977 Ratings

🗓️ 24 June 2018

⏱️ 29 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Grace Dent, restaurant critic and broadcaster asks what's going wrong in the restaurant trade. With hundreds of small and large food outlets closing their doors, some say the restaurant business is in crisis, yet many argue that as an industry its contribution to the British economy is vastly overlooked and underrated. Recorded at Bristol Food Connections in front of an audience, Grace chairs a discussion with guests, Russell Norman restaurateur and TV presenter, broadcaster, critic and restaurant owner Tim Hayward, West Country chef and restaurateur, Romy Gill and chef proprietor Cyrus Todiwala OBE to find out what ails the restaurant scene and how it can be remedied.

Producer: Maggie Ayre.

Transcript

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0:00.0

You're about to listen to a BBC podcast and I'd like to tell you a bit about the

0:03.8

podcast I work on. I'm Dan Clark and I commissioned factual podcasts at the BBC.

0:08.6

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What podcasting does is give us the space and the time to take brilliant BBC journalism

0:19.8

and tell amazing compelling stories that really get behind the headlines.

0:23.7

And what I get really excited about is when we find a way of drawing you into a subject

0:28.4

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0:30.2

Whether it's investigations, science, tech, politics, culture, true crime, the environment,

0:36.1

you can always discover more with a podcast on BBC Sounds.

0:40.0

This is the BBC.

0:43.9

Hello, you've downloaded a podcast of BBC Radio 4's The Food Program.

0:49.0

Welcome to our world, from cooking to culture,

0:52.3

politics to pleasure. We hope you enjoy it.

0:55.0

Hello everyone, I'm Grace Bend and as part of the BBC Food and Farming Awards Bristol Food

1:02.1

Connections.

1:03.2

Let me welcome you warmly to the special food programme debate here at Bristol City Hall. Thank you may know my voice from Radio Forze and told but I'm also the restaurant critic for the Guardian who

1:25.3

travels the land in search of a great dinner. As some of you diners may have

1:31.0

noticed, all is not well in restaurant land. We're

1:35.0

hearing of closures throughout the larger previously strong and confident

1:39.8

chains as well as many sad stories amongst the small independent high street

1:45.1

set-ups and we've all noticed to let signs in front of restaurants that we

1:50.3

liked and we think well I love that place what happened behind every

...

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