The Restaurant 2009

and IIRC the sister of the previous year's winner (*) came and posted as well

(*) he was ex-Army as well wasn't he?

How about sending the guy who complained at the Brentford restaurant last year to see Bodger and Badger :D
 
Something that is curious.. this year they didn't produce a website for it. Last year they had a big website with lots of details about the series, but this year nothing.. just links to the iplayer episodes.
 
As I hinted earlier, I half-wonder if Raymond kept a non-cook just to highlight the farce that the programme has become.

Or is it a case of no food being better than bad food? At least it would save money on the ingredients.

Or maybe Raymond has identified a gap in the market for weightwatchers - have a no-guilt, zero-calorie "restaurant experience" :D
 
I take it from this that you didn't have a booking and RB has therefore lost nothing. :p

A couple I am frienRAB with are completely addicted to Le Manoir and they couldn't care less about The Restaurant. It's just a silly tv show and no reflection on his restaurant whatsoever. I suspect a lot of his faithful customers would feel the same.

I do completely agree that the original format was far, far better. There was too much cringe-factor in this one and the food was not the focus. But I think that was set from the beginning when the contestants were asked to run a Pizza Express and a noodle bar. He was looking for a high street concept and that's what they got.
 
I was really looking forward to the return of The Restaurant. But why have they mucked about with what was a winning format? Gone are the wed/thu episodes and now just 8 one hour weekly programmes. We started off with 9 teams of 2 and already we are down to just 7.
Normally these teams would be given keys to their restaurants and week by week Raymond would close one team's restaurant down until he had found his winning couple. Maybe this was too expensive for the BBC as it seems that the teams will be working next week in established restaurants alongside trained professionals. Bit of a let down after such a long wait for the programme's return.
 
James going out to pick the salmon up and then working his arse off to do the table won't have gone unnoticed.
 
I think the issue is they've cut down the episodes. Last year we had the restaurant night, a long review of their performances and then an episode where they did the challenge.

This year it's just a mixture of both elements in 60 minutes.
 
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