I guess one of the biggest gripes, for want of a better word, is what our members would call, and as I said to you earlier we're here today representing our members, we're not here representing every chef in the UK so I want to make that quite clear that we are representing our members, would be inconsistency and there's a number of forms that recur in terms of inconsistency and that would be through the rosette scheme and they are taught simplicity, they're taught three or four components on a plate, they're taught local, they're taught seasonal and I can think of four or five off the top of my head where I've eaten in high profile restaurants that would totally, totally buck that trend.
There will be raspberries in February, they'll get Spanish asparagus in February, there will be hotels now that will be using white asparagus from France, how do you counter that argument then when you're challenging someone to come into a rosette academy to get two or three or whatever the number of rosettes be and there appears in the industry, who by nature these guys all look up to, are not doing what they're taught in the rosette academy. How do you?"
The rosette academy is a training module to help broaden the knowledge of chefs, but it's not actually aimed that by attending 
our rosette academy you will achieve a better rosette rating". It's a training vehicle where we promote best practice, it gives chefs a better understanding of how the rosette scheme works and general guidelines and I think that comes back to the second point. The AA is probably the only food scheme that tries to be transparent in terms of trying to give parameters and structure to what we look for and I think we can be applauded for that and sometimes we can be criticised for that, but that's what chefs have always asked for.
"We're happy to do that, but I would stress they are guidelines and common sense always prevails. Yes we promote local food but only if it's good enough and local I would say is relative nowadays because I would rather have a squab pigeon coming from Paris if it was fantastic quality than a local wood pigeon which might be tough.
"So it's got to be put into context. The same with seasonality. Of course we all know things taste best in their local season but it doesn't mean to say you might have a product which might be out of local season but still in its in another region, which tastes great because it's about flavour and quality. So there will always be exceptions to the rule, these are not cast iron things. Yes you might go, as you've quoted before, go somewhere and have white asparagus and if you said, "Well the AA's saying this," well it is a guideline and there'll always be exceptions to that.
You can see though where it causes a debate?
Well I suppose that's the downside of actually trying to be transparent, trying to give some structure and some guidelines to a rosette scheme to help the industry and those to be taken almost verbatim. I think you have to stand back and look at the overall meal experience, look at the technical execution, the flavours etc. but we do have some general guidelines but there will always be exceptions.
Of course and I guess to touch on the exceptions one of the threads I read Steve Love at Loves in Birmingham, a number of guys pushing hard for three rosettes, I think there's always this thing with chefs isn't there that the three rosette seems to be the Holy Grail, the moment you've gone beyond."
Well for us it's the top 10% of the rosette scheme, I mean one and two provide 90% of the scheme so three rosettes and above is a very special place. We only have 168 restaurants with three rosettes. We only have circa 24, four rosettes and then only seven with five rosettes.
Yeah it's something to aspire to. But where you have guys on the record who've been inspected and have been told that they are worthy of three rosettes but you as an organisation want to understand that they can be consistent and deliver that over a period of time and therefore they've got to wait X before they can get three rosettes, why again do we see instances, like Steve Love, or Aiden Byrne, who, phenomenal cooks and I'm in no way criticising what they do but they open new operations and get three rosettes in under a year would again you not accept that that again is sending out the wrong message if you are saying to other guys, "You need to be consistent, and you need to do it over X period of time?
"Those establishments have still shown us a consistency over the period of time but as you know any restaurant guide needs to."
But Loves was new, Loves was brand new and it got in, in four months.
Any restaurant guide needs to recognise new restaurants that open of substantial note that might come with a certain track record of delivering food but that's not to say that we still show the same process of doing multiple visits and making sure they're guaranteed. Now on some instances where you've got an establishment that might have had a positive three rosette recommendation we do go back and sometimes it might not be a positive recommendation so therefore it goes back in terms of the visit cycle. So that's where some of the disappointment might come but I think we always try to recognise up and coming and new restaurants as well as existing establishments which are gradually improving.
Is there a time period then that, as an inspector, you set yourself for someone to be consistent?
Yeah we don't have any specific timeframe involved but obviously we have to schedule the visits in accordance to everything else that's going on in our business. So sometimes we can look at somewhere fairly quickly because we might have someone
in the area, otherwise if it's more remote it might take us longer to get back.
If we use Steve and Aiden as examples because of their background, you know, they've got three rosette, Michelin star backgrounds, are they more likely to be on your radar than John Smith who, no disrespect I'm being totally hypothetical here, who's in the middle of nowhere but is working his nuts off basically."
I think if you look at the AA Restaurant Guide it's got a very good cross-representation across the whole of the country, unlike many other guides. We're not just London-centric, we cover every single county, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, we work hard in making sure that we've got good representation, our inspectors are eating all the time, we're constantly talking to the industry and it's really interesting to note some of your blogs that I've been reading in terms of perhaps some of the frustration of actually an establishment not being inspected. We'd love to know about that, because communication's a two way thing, and we get a lot by talking to the industry and talking to a chef in the local area and one of the first things the inspector will ask is, "Where do you eat locally? Where's impressed you because we'd like to know what the industry locally is thinking about as well."
I'm not for one minute suggesting we post you're email address but what I'm saying is a communication channel that chefs know that if they go to that part of the AA website that's where they can go.
Obviously you represent a number of members and you have to take these things case by case otherwise it can be too generic about the whole thing and there are always reasons about it.
And there's always emotion comes into it as well.
Absolutely.
"I'm worth three rosettes."
Absolutely well tell me"
"I'm worth three rosettes because I ate in a three rosette place and my food's as good as theirs."
Of course absolutely.
We see it in recruitment all the time...
But if someone is truly passionate about an establishment or somewhere they've been to lots of times which they feel is two rosettes but should be three rosettes because they've always had a fantastic meal, then the AA are happy to hear about that perhaps The Staff Canteen, can feed us a general trend of particular comments about particular establishments which we could respond to via you. I would say we are a guide like any other guide and we make decisions which I think are through proper process, through
