What is fine dining?

Hello, My name is Jennifer Houston and over the next few months I will be writing all about The Fine Dining aspect of the hospitality industry. I am currently studying International Hospitality Management at university and hope to use this blog to help people of all backgrounds to greater understand what fine dining is and how it impacts the hospitality industry as a whole. I will also write about how different fine dining is compared to casual dining.

Fine dining in my opinion is a restaurant that provides food,beverages and services of an exceptionally high quality or standard to members of the public.The food served in a fine dining restaurant is usually served to their customers in a formal but professional way. An example of a fine dining restaurant would be Heston Blumenthal's restaurant The Fat Duck.

Fine dining restaurants as you may expect charge quite Extortionate amounts of money for their services. This is mainly due to the fact that they try to use the highest quality ingredients which obviously cost a lot more than the ingredients casual dining restaurants would use. Another factor contributing to the price of fine dining restaurants would be that the customer is paying to have an incredibly highly skilled workforce prepare and cook their food to an incredibly high expected standard of quality.

Most but not all of the higher quality fine dining restaurants may be awarded a certain award called a michelin star rating. This award serves as a benchmark or goal for the restaurant and its competition to try and meet. However it is the chef who works in the restaurant not the actual restaurant who is awarded the star rating. This means if the chef leaves the restaurant the restaurant no Longer possesses that star rating. The maximum number of stars that can be awarded are three stars. There are only 4 restaurants in the UK that currently possess 3 michelin stars these are ;

• The Fat Duck in Bray
• The Waterside Inn also in Bray
• Gordon Ramsay's restaurant in Chelsea
• Alain Ducasse at The Dorchester in Mayfair