Rachel Reeves is about to kill off the night out

0:29Hello and welcome to the Standard Podcast. about the Soho nightlife, how it's under siege, under attack by residents there. I also think there's something serious this week as well, which is Rachel Reeves is killing the night out. So I think we're going to have to get into that because it's looking pretty bleak for hospitality. Yeah, when the April budget comes around, a lot of people are feeling a bit negative. For sure.

0:53Well, let's start. Let's start with Senza Fondo. What do you know about this place? Well, I've read your review, obviously. Thank you. All I know is that for 20 quid, you can go in and eat as much lasagna as possible. I don't think you put that to the test as much as I would have. Yeah, there was part of me that went and thought, I just need to do that thing. But when I got there, I realised after speaking to the staff that actually to do the bottomless lasagna, everyone on the table has to do it. And there were four of us. And I actually thought I might want to try a few other bits just to see, is it more than a gimmick?

1:24Oh, right. Hold on. So if you go in to qualify for bottomless lasagna... You and I go on a date, yep. Okay, and we both have to do the 20 quid thing. Yeah, it has to be everyone at the table or no one at the table. They will sell you the lasagna, but it's 15 quid if you just want one portion. They know that a lot of people going in have also been to Pizza Hut in their teenage years. They've seen that rinsing of the salad bar. Fair enough. You know, they're quite smart on that. I have to say, there was so much about it that I wanted to hate, or I thought I would hate rather. And I absolutely loved it.

1:54Do you know scenes from Italian restaurant, the Billy Joel song, A Bottle of Red, A Bottle of White? It is the restaurant from that song. It is checkered red tablecloths. There's loud music playing. There's an actual piano man some nights. Lots of silly posters. A strange number of sort of family posters. And I don't even know if this family is real or if it was just staged. The Dolmio family. Yeah, it probably is. And actually, they've definitely got a sense of humor because some of the posters, you know, you've got them for martini or ginsano or stuff and then there's just cock matches on the wall oh i love those yeah they your favorite your preferred brand absolutely yeah and then there is this bottomless lasagna and as i said we tried it just to see could you get through it and i mean my theory was after one you'd 100 be done so you did the 15 quid thing where you tried it did you share with your companion yes so we got one of the normal um beef lasagna and then another of the artichoke alternative so are the veggie option yeah so presumably that can be bottomless as well if you're vegetarian so talk me through the lasagna so you wanted to hate this restaurant but you ended up loving it no no i didn't want to because i never go to a restaurant thinking this would be great i'm so sorry but just reading the website there's so many things on it that irritate me that the owner calls himself the chief bechamel officer which yeah that's horrific yeah even the branding it looks like it's a brand of bathroom cleaner the way that they've laid it out even the annoying exclamation mark you can read my review to see what i did what was the phrase you used i said it was the punctuation of choice for the mentally unassembled yeah i'd agree with you exclamation mark should never be used so this anyway we did all these starters which is which are in the review you get sort of pizzettes not smart if you're planning to see the bottomless There's lots to like about this place.

3:42It's a great atmosphere, disco music. The lasagna itself, though, baffled me because it doesn't look like the press pictures, or it certainly didn't on our evening. And it was just this weird congealed mess of sauce. And then even the pasta sheets in between, it kind of sort of seemed to be too done. I felt like the dish had been cooked hours and hours before service. I'm not saying it was because I have no idea. I didn't get a chance to ask, but it just was awful. And the artichoke one smelled like where I used to have school dinners. Right. And impolitely, it smelled of after like sports day when everyone just like goes in sweating, stinky, smelly.

4:22It was just this horrible smell of overcooked artichokes. Don't remember having artichokes at school myself. But so this is so. So talk me through the lasagna. Was it just beef or beef and pork? The lasagna sheets. do you think that they were pre-cooked and then sometimes people pre-cooked then build and then cook and bake the bechamel was it not unctuous and delicious was it kind of a bit congealed and flabby congealed and flabby are the words i'd use it was beef shin um oh okay that's interesting it sounds good yeah and also actually very savvy as an operator because it is not traditionally considered an expensive cut and you know should it be you know then you're supposed to be a cheap milk yeah absolutely the tomato was just sort of indistincts and it was just this flabby mess that was sort of really difficult to get through how were the layers well that was the other structure is integral obviously well yeah of course what you want is sort of a small apartment block of pasta on your plate but actually what we had was sort of a post second world war bombing dirty victorian tenement that was sadly that's exactly what it was you don't want that no you don't it with sort of ceilings falling through all that to say the rest of the experience is amazing and i really think people should go because you'll have a brilliant brilliant nice out um i don't drink negronis anymore but you can have five pound negronis as many as you like before the food arrives then it goes up to 9 50 that's another savvy really savvy yeah they do it a bruto and in fact yeah there's an element of the bruto in this anyway um russell norman's famous restaurant up in farrington yes a wonderful restaurant yeah delightful it was interesting afterwards i was thinking why did i like this where i don't really like the big mama group whose foods i also don't think it's very good but people love it whereas i go and i just think this is a horrendous waste and i think it's because the price point generally feels a bit cheaper and because it doesn't seem so pleased with itself there's not all this like fancy crockery that after three times through the dishwasher gets a bit worn out it it's not performing too much it's very much have a good time you're there for atmosphere you're there for that feeling you know when there's a few of you around the table everyone's maybe had a little bit too much to drink and you're just laughing hysterics over the most stupid things and you sort of forget what you've eaten it's that kind of feeling.

6:51Talk to me about what's happening in Soho because it's a bit of a problem right? Yeah Soho the epicentre of London's nightlife is under siege I think as a new strategy or proposals from residents called quiet nights where pubs bars restaurants will have to essentially dampen the vibe not so much music earlier closing times an encouragement for guests to sort of you know take it easy or not come at all it's curious to me because soho has been the center of london's nightlife for centuries almost you know since the 19th century anyway famous it's world famous something that we can be really proud of it's home to amazing restaurants brilliant pubs wonderful bars clubs for afterwards um for those who really want to go for it and i think that's something to be celebrated and i think if you compare london with new york athens bangkok three of my favorite places to kind of have a night out in the world obviously soho needs to be safe for everyone it needs to be accessible and inclusive and I realize there are efforts to ensure that and that's all very well and that's down to the police and the council I think and also business owners around who the those who I do know work tirelessly to ensure that Soho is both fun and a safe place to go.

8:13I think the one thing that really baffles me about this is I think you're being very careful because to me when i moved to london uh gosh 13 14 years ago the first place i went was soho and obviously it was a lot more affordable then than it is now and i recognize that it's not the same place for 22 year old to go to but it's been the center of sort of a raucous kind of fun a sort of debauched style of fun i actually think it's a lot tamer than it used to be and i think everyone who's in soho always says well you weren't here in the heyday we said that about the 80s the 80s said it about the 50s the 50s said it around so you know goes on and on but it seems really strange to me if you are a resident of Soho now that you are complaining about somewhere that you cannot have moved to and not realize what it's like yeah this is a point I make in the piece which is to say Soho had a reputation for being just that fun lively raucous whatever and every city needs that area London's probably got more than one you know you could argue that shoreditch is a bit like that certainly a lot of hangney you know and that's all very well young people come to london because not only for the jobs but because work hard play hard if you spend monday to friday working really hard then you deserve to go and have fun some people don't want to have fun in that way and that's fine you know paintballing whatever go to the seaside great the point i make is is that the reason so many of these people must have been attracted to soho in the first place is because and it's not just drinking it's art creativity music a really important kind of drag queen scene and there's a reason so many famous people are associated with Soho they've come through and drunken the pubs um they've performed they've written there they've painted there maybe they've been to pride exactly or maybe they're into their fashion I mean a huge tailoring absolutely so people are aware of that and they must have known that when they moved and it's ironic because that must have been the pull in the first place and now they're trying to dampen it and if that happens then all of this culture will move elsewhere and I think the other problem is when that happens, well, invariably, the businesses, they might change.

10:09That's a possibility as well. But it sounds like they're going to suffer. Yeah. Because if you're saying, okay, well, you run a pub, great. And you want people in and you want to have such a good pub that people want to stay till closing, which in Soho is early anyway. It's not like there are that. Can be. Yeah. There are still venues with 3 a.m. licenses and 1 a.m. licenses and they're not all private clubs, even though I think a lot of people think they are. But you have a lot of pubs close at 11 or 11.30. And I know that's late. But if you're running such a good business people want to stay there till the end, spending money, putting money back into the economy.

10:38It feels counterproductive, especially given the state financially of this country at the moment to say we'd rather they left at 10. Yeah. And it feels stifling and it feels a bit suffocating. Business needs to thrive. You need to be free to come up with great ideas, to be creative. And, you know, 2000 residents seeming to be dictating the will and freedoms of millions, actually because that's how many people come to London every year and I think there's a really powerful line uh in your piece or something that struck me as very powerful was the idea that so many people are priced out of the center of town anyway certainly to live and now it's almost as if well now you're not even allowed to enjoy it yeah and I think also the other idea is all of those businesses are sort of interconnected so you leave the Prince Edward Theatre you might go to Boehm across the road yeah for a drink or if you leave Ronnie Scott's and that's about the theatre or it's about live music or jazz.

11:34And then suddenly you might come out to a dead or deadened street. Oh, it would be ridiculous. There's no romance. There's no camaraderie. And also you might want to just talk about what you've seen and now you can't. And that to me seems baffling. And I suppose what we're talking about is what we should probably move on to is about this idea of the night out being killed in some way or certainly changing forever. And one person who's not helping that is our dear Chancellor, Rachel Reeves. So what's happening in April is that But there are many things. Obviously, there's the national minimum wage going up, which doesn't really affect a lot of businesses in London because most of them, not all of them, but a lot of them, sorry, are paying that anyway.

12:10But the big thing is that the employer's national insurance contribution goes to 15 % from 13.8%. And it's 1.2%, obviously, for those who enjoy quick maths. That doesn't sound like a lot. But if you operate a business of any size, that is tens and tens of thousands of pounds. I was talking to James Robson who owns Fallow, really, really famous and very popular restaurant. He also owns Rowe. For them, it's about 900 ,000 a year, almost to a million, which wipes out his profits for the next year. And he's not alone. If you read the piece online, standard.co.uk forward slash going out, there are lots of people that I speak to.

12:47And what it means is that restaurants won't grow. Bars won't grow. They won't try new things. They can't reinvest. So the quality of the product inherently will go down. And also in order to manage those contributions, one way to do it is to get rid of stuff. So we've got fewer jobs. So we've got more people working in other industries or not working at all. And obviously that has a financial impact on the country. Or they're going to do things like they'll change the loo roll or the flowers, or they might swap suppliers for the meat that they use, the veg or something like that. And all of that means that the consumer is worse off.

13:21And the other thing that I think is quite sad about it is because the threshold has gone down as well, the earning threshold for what employers need to pay the NIC on, is casual work has become a lot harder to have. Because you used to have to earn 9 ,100, and now it's 5 ,000. So if you have someone who works in all their university holidays, they're going to hit that. And so suddenly the employer has to pay the NIC, and it all adds up. And so you're sort of thinking, right, well, does that mean that kids don't have summer jobs anymore or Christmas holiday? And who does that benefit? Is it beneficial for us to have students who can't earn and can't spend?

13:55And is it beneficial for a restaurant in a busy period to not have the stuff that they need so that when you order your first pint of beer, it takes another five minutes to arrive? or that the plate that comes out of the kitchen isn't spotless because they don't have the person to wipe the sauce stains off or whatever it is. It can be really small things, but imperceptibly, all of our experiences are likely to lessen. Yeah, and I guess, obviously, the overarching premise here is the government is trying to find money from somewhere. We've got things to pay for. You know, the whole country seems to be on its knees.

14:26So the idea that we need to find more money to pay for stuff is sound, clearly. But then, as you say, if we're thinking sort of long term, you paint a pretty dire picture because we need to find more money. But then if fewer people are in work or if businesses are folding, then it's going to damage everything anyway. I guess the point is, and the message that we can give is, if you do have a bit of disposable income, then make sure, and you do love eating out, then use it or lose it. Because, you know, restaurants, pubs, bars, they need people in. It's a great thing about Britain. It's a wonderful industry.

14:56I think it's the third biggest employer still contributes billion a year to GDP. So let's keep that going as best we can. I think the things that I find difficult about this as well is, as you said, the largest employer, it feels odd to me to be effectively penalizing such a big industry. And then the other thing that I would say is that the other way that restaurants find the money is by passing on the cost to the consumer. Yeah. Now, I already think restaurants are pricing themselves out of their own business. You know, I know personally, I can't go out as much and I'm sure you feel the same way.

15:29And if it's even more expensive, I'm going to get out less, which means that whole industry just looks like it's getting more and more fragile. I should also say there are lots of operators out there who are feeling kind of confident. Adam Handling was saying, you know, we've already made those adjustments. It's going to cost this business the best part of 700 ,000. But the thing is, we just have to get on with it. And there are loads of people who are really resilient. So it's not like this poor old industry is going to collapse, but it is going to change things for all of us. And it seems baffling to me.

15:55And it also changes the ecosystem around restaurants, whether that is suppliers, whether that is PR companies who rely on them for work. Every business is going through the same change, but I think not every business is forward facing. And, you know, if the bank has lost a member of staff, I don't know if we necessarily see that. But you will see it in a restaurant and you will notice that your experience is getting more expensive and worse.

16:22Well, I think that's probably plenty from us this week. So thank you for listening. Yes, thank you very much. And you've been listening to the Standard Podcast. For more on these stories, please head to standard.co.uk forward slash going out. And of course, make sure that you listen to the Standard Podcast wherever you get them.