The Sweet Service Award goes to Chef Peter Tempelhoff of The Greenhouse, for refusing to assist controversial 2012 Eat Out Top 10 Restaurant judge Bruce Palling with information about the ingredients of the dishes he ate at The Greenhouse FIVE months ago! Having seen the trashing by Palling of his restaurant colleagues, he understandably refused to co-operate: ‘Unfortunately, I am not comfortable with you blogging about your meal with us- which took place 6 months ago. (actually it was five, but why quibble over a month? –Palling commented). I feel that if you were going to blog about the dinner you should have asked for the menu, or perhaps taken notes during it. I just don’t think it will be an accurate account of your meal with us’. It was no surprise that Palling made a meal of this in his blogpost addition, pardon the pun! Chef George Jardine and Andy Fenner should be praised too for speaking up against Palling’s restaurant judging and bashing, respectively, but one wonders why there is not outrage expressed by restaurants and their diners about Palling’s shocking behaviour. It is sad that there is so much fear about being disadvantaged by Eat Out if restaurants speak out!
The Sour Service Award goes to Palling supporters, who on Twitter have reTweeted the South African Eat Out Top 20 shortlist restaurant blogposts by Palling, seemingly not having read what Palling has written, and unable to understand what dreadful damage Palling is doing to our restaurant and tourism industry (BA Highlife is available on the route between London and Cape Town!). One wonders how Tweeters such as Michael Olivier, Cape Town Tourism’s Skye Grove, @Bigbigjoe1, Paula Rossouw, Anne Dolinschek, Lisa Fullstone, Theo Cromhout, South African Tourism USA, Priya Reddy, Meruschka (@MzansiGirl), Laura Evans, Ishay Govender-Ypma (surprisingly she is an Eat Out restaurant reviewer!), Tony Ward, and Jane-Anne Hobbs Rayner can support the destruction of our top restaurants at the hands of Palling? Olivier and his band mistakenly believe that a vote for Palling is a vote for Eat Out and its editor Abigail Donnelly. The opposite is true, however, in that he has not only damaged our restaurant industry to international visitors to our country, but that he has also been disrespectful to our top chefs and to Eat Out. New Media Publishing deserves to be included in the Sour Award, for not having addressed the industry since Palling started his Eat Out top 20 restaurant bashing a week ago!
POSTSCRIPT 8/2: New Media Publishing has brought forward the release of its media statement to today.
The WhaleTales Sweet & Sour Service Awards are presented every Friday on the WhaleTales blog. Nominations for the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be sent to Chris von Ulmenstein at info@whalecottage.com. Past winners of the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be read on the Friday posts of this blog, and in the WhaleTales newsletters on the www.whalecottage.com website.
20
3070
27k
20