Claridge’s Bakery’s moves in on Tesco, things get heated at the ideas festival, and workers hide in the loo; catch up on the latest London shenanigans in The Capitalist
MAYFAIR MEAL DEAL
Forget your sad Tesco club sandwich, there’s a new meal deal in town – and it comes without the wet eggs. Claridge’s Bakery, led by baker hotshots Richard Hart and Frederic Doncel-Latorre, yesterday announced the launch of the ‘Mayfair Meal Deal’: an offering which will allow its patrons a signature sandwich, drink and sweet treat for just £15. It’s not quite Tesco’s £3.85, but The Capitalist would never be seen dead scanning a Clubcard.
For those readers who do concern themselves with ‘deals’, however, may we suggest a look at the kids menu, where Rachel Reeves’ temporary VAT cut as part of her summer cost of living package is inspiring creativity among restaurateurs.
With the tax guidance stipulating a children’s meal must simply be smaller, cheaper and marketed for kids, but not necessarily eaten by kids, the Chancellor has created somewhat of a loophole for mischievous menu writers. Just down the road from Claridges, for example, restaurant Kitty Fisher has announced it will now be offering a children’s menu featuring lobster, steak au poivre, oysters, offal, snails “and all the other good stuff KIDS love”. Wink wink. Meanwhile, the Blue Stoops in Kensington has more brazenly announced a ‘Chancellor’s Children’s Menu’, complete with a ‘tax break tart’.
The Capitalist commends the restaurants not only for their humour, but for their resistance to the usual impulse of London restaurants to charge a premium for shrunk-down portions, otherwise known as ‘small plates’.
HOW THE AIRFLOW GETS IN
Reform UK’s head of policy James Orr may have been promoting his controversial immigration policies, but that heat was no match for the 31 degree temperatures at How The Light Gets In festival. It was absolutely sweltering, and didn’t Gillian Tett, editor-at-large for the US Financial Times, know it. Instead of challenging Orr on his dinghy narrative, she spent a decent proportion of her debate, entitled The End of the Great Alliance, begging stewards to roll up the sides of the tent to allow airflow. Ironic that a logistical crisis made one of very few financial journalists to have successfully predicted the 2008 economic crash sweat.
NEXT!
When the shadow business secretary, Andrew Griffith, blasted Treasury minister Dan Tomlinson as “an inexperienced PPE graduate who has never run a business in his life”, the Labour MP hit back, urging the Tory to “play the ball, not the man”. If only the Business Department took that advice. When asked about Next CEO Lord Wolfson’s critique of government policy (which has been hammering the jobs market, not least in the retail sector) a spokesperson for the department said “Lord Wolfson, who earned more than £7m last year, will understand just how important our measures to make work pay are for the financial and job security of working people.” What’s Wolfson’s (extremely well-earned) remuneration got to do with it? If the government could grow the economy half as well as Wolfson has grown Next, we’d all be a lot better off.
SALT OF THE EARTH
The SNP fraud scandal is many things: shocking, outrageous and unbelievable. It is also hilarious. The writer Jill Foster recognised the comic potential of the situation by proposing the following formula. “Find your Peter Murrell item by putting a pound sign against your number of X followers followed by the last thing you touched in your kitchen.” In the City AM newsroom this yielded such treats as “£2,973 chopping board” and “£16,900 light switch”. Other replies to Foster’s post include a “£416 tea towel” and “£3,655 washing up bowl”. All of these are just as plausible as the “£2,681 salt and pepper mills” – which really did appear on the notorious shopping list.
LOO LURKING
Prefer the bog to your boss? You’re not alone. According to a new survey, almost half (44 per cent) of workers have admitted to hiding in the toilet to escape work stress. The behaviour, coined ‘loo lurking’, is apparently significantly more common among women. Kickresume, who commissioned the survey, suggested partakers of the practice “reflect on why” they’re loo lurking, and also urged employees to give kind words if they find their colleague crying in the bathroom.
