ALL-BRITISH MENU?

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 37, 13 August 1923, Page 6

ALL-BRITISH MENU?

Difficulty has arisen in ' London over the matter of providing food and drink for the Great Imperial Exhibition to be held in London next year. The idea was that all meals served in the Exhibition restaurants should be furnished from British i sources—tea from India and Ceylon, meat from Australia and New Zealand, wines from South Africa and Australia, butter and cheese, fruit, flour, sugar, coffee, cocoa,, game, fish, mineral waters, and the thousand and one things that go to the making "of a meal, all were to be British from the United Kingdom or the Overseas Dominions. There was trouble at the very outset, when the idea was first put forward. The Dominions concerned were insistent on the carrying out of what was to them a perfectly practicable scheme of advertising the enormous resources of the Empire. The opinion of the restaurateurs was all against the scheme. The view taken was that public taste was. only met by furnishing it with what it wanted, not what the caterer thought it ought to have for the good of the Empire. French wines and Havarinah cigars were quoted as instances, and in to-day's cablegram from London champagne and Havannah cigars are again brought forward. From these two articles most profit, it is said, is derived, and to them and some others contractors for refreshments look to make up losses or small returns from other cates.

If an All-British menu is insisted upon the contractors Bay they will not tender. They look at the matter more from a business point of view than from any other. Public taste in meat and drink, as in the arts, is a, curious thing, and not one to be lightly dealt with; more especially in London, which is the most cosmopolitan city in the world, and will be intensely so during the Exhibition. Dictation in meat and drink, whatever Americans or Britons overseas may put up with, British and the Continental peoples have always resented. Evidently the restaurateurs know this, hence their refusal to tender if nothing but British and Dominions articles must be used in catering for the public visiting the Exhibition. It is sincerely to be hoped that the admirable idea of an All-British menu will not be abandoned. It will afford the great chance of the Overseas Dominions to show what they can do in this direction; but some sort of compromise may be effected that will partly, if not wholly, meet the case. It would be lamentable if anything like a fiasco was the result of these differences of opinion, Possibly restaurants in ' each court could specialise in the products of the country represented., and so give the product or products extra publicity.