Thanks John Lethlean

I read with much interest John Lethlean’s Weekend Australian Magazine review of The Mill on Morrison, in Hobart on Saturday 12/5/12.

I need to make a few gross generalisations before I move on with my thoughts on his review, just to set the scene. Firstly, The Australian is read Australia-wide, by people of a certain ilk. Most of those readers would be the types of people with a reasonably disposable income, and an interest in, or passion for, good food, wine and culture. These are the people who are currently bringing in a lot of high end dollars to the state whilst they arrive to do a foraging and cooking course with Rodney Dunn at Agrarian Kitchen in Lachlan, staying at Islington in South Hobart or Saffire at Coles Bay, eating at Garagistes in the city and spending time at MONA at Berriedale.

All of those activities are wonderful, and worthy recipients of the high end dollar, and are providing our state with the kudos of being THE place for quality experiences for the discerning mainlander.

Without a doubt, all the abovementioned places have top quality staff whose sole aim in their working life is to provide their customer with absolute perfection in their devotion to duty.

But these same customers should beware that if they stray off the straight and narrow road of any of the above venues, they are likely to find exactly what John Lethlean describes in his review – a lack of committed service, bad food and general questionable hospitality practices.

Let me hurry to assure one and all that these are merely generalizations, and that every single place that isn’t one mentioned above is therefore unprofessional and inconsistent! That is definitely NOT the case. Hence my blog listing of Recommended Best Eats….these are places I have been to over a period of time and found to have two of my most desirable attributes in a hospitality environment: consistently good service and consistently good food. Note the word ‘consistent’. My belief is that this is where we, as a collective hospitality industry, are severely let down. We are simply not consistent enough. Hence decimating reviews such as John Lethlean gave Meadowbank a few months back, and The Mill over the weekend.

Coincidentally, in the weeks before Lethlean published his Meadowbank review, I had gone there and genuinely written a most glowing and complimentary review of the wonderful food and service I had received there. I was blown away by my experience, to such an extent that I decided to take a party of 6 hospitality friends there a few weeks later. The variation and difference in food and service was astronomical. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have believed it. Our experience the second time was the polar opposite of my previous visit. The service was abysmal, and the food, just plain bad. I went to the toilet deliberately to check in the kitchen to see if head chef Wayne Smith was present, thinking that maybe they were without him that day, which might account for the food, but he was there.

Then the week after, Lethlean’s review appeared in The Weekend Australian, slamming Meadowbank for all the faults and foibles we had observed the week before. Had I not returned to Meadowbank after my previous visit, I would have been hugely offended and affronted on Meadowbank’s behalf at such an unfair attack on an obviously wonderful place. As it was, I had to nod regretfully as I read it, as by then I totally understood where Lethlean was coming from, and that he probably had, in fact, had an experience identical to mine.

So, despite the fact that I haven’t been to The Mill, I think John Lethlean has done us a favour. He is using eyes, ears and a mouth which travel Australia reviewing restaurants. He has not decided to pick on Tasmania specifically. He has judged a few Tasmanian restaurants on a nation-wide basis, and has found us lacking in many areas. I believe consistency is the main one.

Commenter on this blog, Richard, is correct when he says we fall so short it’s embarrassing.

That’s what blew me away when eating at St Kat’s in Melbourne a month ago. I looked around the room, watching body language and overhearing conversations, and thought to myself there was 100% approval by all customers present there. Nothing was left to chance by all staff, both FOH and kitchen. The food was exactly the standard it should have been, as was the service. It was so obviously consistent.

So Tassie restaurants – take note – take your heads out of your collective butts! Stop being so loudly proud of being Tasmanian, and automatically thinking that gives you a passport to fabulousness, and ensure you actually CAN deliver the goods, every single minute of every single day you are trading.