EMPIRE MENUS

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 133, 9 June 1927, Page 13

EMPIRE MENUS

:MAERETDv tG BOARD'S

CAMPAIGN

(From "The Post*" Representative.) LONDON,' 4th May.

"British Food for British Guests" might well be adopted as the slogan of a campaign which is now being formulated by the Empire Marketing Board, and is to be launched shortly. The board intends to publish in pamphlet form a series of menus of dinners, in which only foodstuffs derived from tho Empire will be included. Tho pamphlets will be widely Bistributed, but details of the scheme have not yet been framed. «

Tho publication of. this Empire bill of fare will come at tho beginning of the_ season of official and civic banquets, which are attended each year by largo numbers of distinguished foreign visitors. If copies of it were to be sent to tho Mayors up and down tho country and to other officials whoso positions lead them to entertain, a tradition of "eating Imperially"—in public, at least —might be firmly established. The Empire Marketing Board has already had experience in the art of selecting all-British menus. It will bo recalled that it undertook tho responsibility of drawing up the all-Empire Christmas dinner of tho Kings and Queen. "The Empire dinners which wo are going to describe in the pamphlet will be rather more. elaborate than tho Christmas dinner of the Eoyal Family," an official of the board explained. "It would undoubtedly be a great achievement if we could persuade those who are giving official banquets to provide Imperial food."

Sir Francis Towle, who controls one of tho largest groups of hotels in tho country^, also approved of the scheme.

In my opinion (ho said) the Empire Marketing Board should endeavour particularly to give to the genoral publio who eat mostly in their homes information about Imperial foods which thoy can obtain. It is in the homes of tho country that the bulk of food is consumed, and if housewives could bo induced to buy only Empire-grown food the effect on Dominion and colonial trade would be enormous."