What you might have missed on The Caterer this week

Ice-cream-gate

In a situation reminiscent of Diana Beard removing Iain Watters’ baked Alaska from the freezer in a 2014 episode of The Great British Bake-Off, Danny Young faced a similar dilemma in the final of the National Chef of the Year 2026. His rather more complex dessert of Valrhona fruit and nut tart with mascarpone ice-cream and Pedro Ximénez sherry – “a sophisticated take on a Cadbury’s Fruit & Nut”, he says – had to be hastily rethought at the last minute when he saw a freezer jammed with other contestants’ desserts. “You’re in a kitchen with 10 other chefs and if the freezer is packed, the temperature rises and things don’t freeze in time,” he says.

Young decided to turn a neat rocher of ice-cream into a soft-serve side portion and disaster was averted – and he won the title. He talks about what he’s been doing with his time as National Chef of the Year, which has included trips to France, Australia, Bordeaux and Cornwall. His biggest piece of advice for next year’s contestants? Always have a plan B.

Second life

We also talked to Adam Charity of the Coaching Inn, who shared that rooms rather than F&B are the major growth driver for the company since its acquisition by RedCat Hospitality in 2021. This is partly because the group spends such time and care carrying out its refurbishments, ensuring the original use of each building is referenced and sympathetically restored with an eye on the ‘story’ behind the site. This can be seen in its latest acquisition, the Warwick Arms in Warwickshire, which began life in 1591 and has served guests including Admiral Nelson.

The group isn’t worried about taking on a challenge and is planning on expanding to 60 sites in the next five years. Its criteria are for buildings in a town centre, with a minimum of 30 bedrooms, and anything that is expensive to maintain or repair is positively welcomed: “We’ve got a fantastic team who are great at that, so we don’t see that as a challenge – it’s an exciting project,” Charity says.

I did it my way

Finally, we talked to Stuart Ralston about his fourth opening in Edinburgh, Vinette, which he describes as “an ilk of that flavour in an inauthentic version” of a Parisian restaurant. It’s the French lunchtime experience seen though the lens of an experienced Scottish restaurateur: £32 for two courses, carafes of wine and bread plonked on the table as you sit down. Dishes are rethought versions of recipes Ralston grew up eating, with memories of walking around Paris before sitting down in a café for gâteau and a coffee. 

This can be seen in his marjolaine cake, a traditional concoction with layers of ganache, buttercream and dacquoise, glazed with chocolate and scattered with salted hazelnuts, brought right up to date with the salted milk ice-cream on top. It’s not all delicate French nostalgia though – Ralston has a crowd-pleasing burger on the menu for the first time, drawing on his time spent in New York. He has strict rules for it: “I don’t want any hot salad or lettuce in a burger, and it has to be a potato bun as it’s squidgy enough to soak everything up and mould around it, rather than the hard-to-eat brioche buns that don’t change shape.”

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