欧美文化:Interview: Top UK chef warns restaurants to face bleak winter without gov't help

LONDON, Dec. 29 (Xinhua) -- One of Britain's top chefs has warned that he fears for the future of restaurants across the country unless government offers a helping hand.

"I'm now into the 41st year of being a chef and being in the restaurant business. We've never, ever seen challenges like we have right now, and it's incredibly difficult to manage," Paul Askew, chef patron at the up-market Art School restaurant in Liverpool, told Xinhua in a recent interview.

A shrinking economy and soaring inflation, on the back of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine conflict, were an absolute recipe for disaster, Askew said. He is also a fellow of the Royal Academy of Culinary Arts.

"This problem is not just isolated to Liverpool and the northwest. This is absolutely nationwide," he said, noting that the industry is facing tremendous risks brought about by the ongoing cost-of-living crisis, the surging energy bills, the rising cost of commodities and the problem of under-staffing.

"You're not just talking about things going up two, three, four percent. You're talking about things going up 25, 30 and 40 percent. Dairy, fish, meat, staples, flour, vegetable oil, you name it. Everything has gone north, nothing's going south," complained the chef.

Pushed up by soaring energy bills and food prices, inflation in Britain has been running high since last winter, reaching successive new records. In November, inflation in the country stood at 10.7 percent.

The rising prices have made Britain's consumers more budget-conscious. A survey conducted by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed that about 60 percent of adults were planning on cutting back on their Christmas spending compared with last year. People are buying fewer and less expensive food and gifts and eating out less.

Also, many restaurants were hit over the Christmas holiday by transport strikes, which prompted customers to cancel their dining plans in what normally was the busiest period of the year for restaurants.

The catering industry, Askew said, considered October through December as the golden quarter, when traditionally restaurants expected to generate up to a third, in some cases half, of their annual revenue. But the poor performance in this year's golden quarter has made the industry much more vulnerable.

According to a survey conducted in late October by UKHospitality, the British Beer and Pub Association, the British Institute of Innkeeping and Hospitality Ulster, more than a third of the hospitality sector is at risk of business failure in early 2023 due to the cost-of-doing-business crisis.

Eighty-nine percent of the respondents said they were either not confident or pessimistic that the current levels of support offered by the government would protect the industry in the next few months.

Askew urged the government to recalibrate its support for the hospitality and catering industry, for example, in its upcoming Spring Budget.

"I know people who've already given up their businesses or decided to close for the winter because they can't afford to heat them, or use the gas to cook on, which is incredibly bad for the economy."