Restaurant berates customers for not ordering a starter

After a lacklustre first week of trading at The Yellow Bittern, its chef telling patrons they are ‘there to spend money’

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The chef of a new London restaurant has berated his customers for not ordering starters with their meals.
Hugh Corcoran – who is also the co-owner and founder of The Yellow Bittern in Islington, north London – made the move after a lacklustre first week of trade.
The 18-seat British-Irish bistro, which opened on Oct 31, is only open for lunch on weekdays, only takes cash and tables can only be booked by telephone or postcard.
Mr Corcoran expressed his dissatisfaction with the appetite of diners in a social media post. He wrote that “restaurants are not public benches”, adding: “You are there to spend money.”
In an Instagram post he said: “It is now apparently completely normal to book a table for four people, say, and then order one starter and two mains to share and a glass of tap water.
“There was at one point an etiquette in restaurants that if you booked a table in a nice place you at the very least had to order a main course (and possibly even a starter or dessert) and drink wine in order for your table to be worth serving.
“At the very least order correctly, drink some wine, and justify your presence in the room. And in the case that a plate of radishes is enough for you and your three friends for lunch, then perhaps an allotment would be a better investment than a table at a restaurant.”
Some responding to his post accused him of being tone deaf amid a cost-of-living crisis. However, Corcoran later doubled down on his statement, telling The Guardian: “If you’re not hungry, don’t go.”
Mr Corcoran added: “There’s an etiquette everywhere – theatres, bars. You don’t talk in a cinema, and you go to a restaurant when you’re ready to eat, as a treat.”
Lynsey Coughlan, owner of another new British-Irish restaurant that opened earlier this year in east London, said it was not normal for restaurants to only do a lunch service.
She told The Times: “Put it this way, if I didn’t open weekends, my business wouldn’t survive.”
Clerkenwell Boy, a food blogger, said: “Lunch for most people usually involves something grab-and-go, cheap and cheerful. Not to be mean, but perhaps it’s best they just serve cakes, tea and coffee instead of pretending to be a restaurant.”
Mr Corcoran, a Belfast-born cook who trained in the Basque country, is one of three co-founders of The Yellow Bittern. The other two are Oisin Davies, a bookseller, and Lady Frances von Hofmannsthal, editor of Luncheon magazine, who also happens to be the youngest daughter of the late Lord Snowdon.
The Yellow Bittern was contacted by The Telegraph for comment.
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