Lamb festival in floating pub

Press, 21 January 1983, Page 7

Lamb festival in floating pub

NZPA staff correspondent London The New Zealand Meat Board has begun a highpowered campaign to sell lamb to the British public in the unusual setting of a paddle steamer. The board is one of several groups featuring in a festival of New Zealand products on board the steamer Tattershall Castle which has been converted to a pub on London's Thames Embankment. Mr W. L. Young, the New Zealand High Commissioner to London, launched the week-long festival last Monday by releasing 500 coloured balloons from the deck of the 49-year-old ship. The steamer's menu over the next week will include New Zealand cheese, butter, wine, and beers as well as lamb and there will also be

displays of Maori dancing and a cocktail evening with kiwifruit as the main theme.

The Meat Board's promotion of lamb will cost a record £lBO.OOO (about $NZ378.000) this year, an increase of 80 per cent over their budget for 1982. Announcing the budget. Mr Roy Hicks, the board's catering officer, said that the main emphasis of the promotion would be on the use of New Zealand lamb as a catering red meat.

He said that the costeffectiveness of lamb was the principal factor accounting for its increased use by caterers.

More than 30 million pounds of New Zealand lamb will be eaten by the British public in meals away from home this year — in pubs, restaurants.’ hotels, and via

staff catering, he said. Lamb was a popular choice meat in Britain, Mr Hicks said. It formed part of the nation’s staple diet and was well within the reach of the average household. This was in contrast to other countries, such as France, where lamb was a luxurv.

Special recipes have been developed for the Tattershall Castle promotion. They included a New Zealand iamb, apple and rice salad; lemon and ginger chops: and a version of the Greek favourite. moussaka.

Part of the promotion material which is designed to draw caterers' attention to New Zealand lamb features “Dickens," a chef character created by Frank Dickens, best known to Londoners for his Bristow cartoon in their evening newspaper, the “Standard."