Jim White’s review of Forman’s Fish Island for The Telegraph – our response
In last Saturday’s Telegraph appeared what in my view was an unbalanced and inaccurate report on our restaurant at Forman’s Fish Island and the breakfast offered during the Olympics by sports writer Jim White.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/9467551/Formans-Fish-Island-London-restaurant-review.html
Here are our comments on the article in question:
1. Cost – The main gripe was that the breakfast was £75 per head and everything else seemed to stem from that. Indeed our gourmet dinner on the opening night quoted at £999 was also criticized on the basis of cost. Yes, it is not cheap and aimed at the corporate market – however, compare this with the official Olympic hospitality dinner on the opening night at £7,500 and ours was a positive bargain. Even deducting £2012 for the cost of a ticket to the opening ceremony, the official Olympic dinner was 5 times the cost of ours. We believed setting our prices at approximately 20% of the official prices was fair and indeed the most expensive lunches and dinners with us were the ones which sold best. The breakfast itself was actually £37.50 for a full English with croissants and pastries, breads, granola, fresh fruit, yogurt, coffee and juices. There was an option of a paying a further £37.50 to add unlimited sparkling wine which Jim decided to take. This detail is left out of the review.
2. Value – Jim White complains that for £75 there was a choice of only fruit salad, dried up and poor quality full English on a wooden board, which itself was questioned, coffee served out of a plastic cup, fold up chairs that you’d find at a function and that he would have preferred McDonald’s. Well that just about sums it up! He clearly has no appreciation of quality cuisine – the picture of the food on the wooden board looks very appealing and the vast majority of diners with Forman’s are highly complimentary about our food. We do NOT have fold up chairs and we do NOT have plastic cups, our linen is linen. This is not opinion, it is an out and out defamation. Nor did we only offer fruit salad. In addition, another detail that was not mentioned was that all diners were entitled to free entry to our Fish Island Riviera site, for which others were paying £25 alone. It also included entry to the Muhammad Ali exhibition ‘In the Rings with Ali’ which was opened by Ali’s brother, Rahaman, the week prior.
The article also suggested that we were offering English sparkling wine rather than champagne because it is cheaper. We were not. Our restaurant specialises in English wines and we are proud to promote them to the food loving public. Both Chapel Down and Nye Timber have won more awards than many Champagne houses, but are not allowed to be referred to as Champagne as they are not produced there.
3. Quality – when the Telegraph’s food photographer came here to photograph the food, I asked her what she thought of it and she said it was delicious. I hope you agree that in the photograph it looks rather nice. We had a great many compliments during the Olympics and have every confidence in the quality of our food.
4. Numbers of guests – we were criticized for having few guests here. It is true that there were few guests, certainly in the first week. This is nothing to do with the price of our food. The Counter Café, adjacent to us, produces excellent quality food in a different style of setting and is much more affordable, yet it was empty too. LOCOG, the Olympic organizers, were deliberately steering people away from us, and channelling them through Westfield shopping centre, with all its fast food restaurants, and so there was less footfall than on a normal summer’s day. We had been forced by local authorities to spend thousands upon thousands of pounds in planning for the masses of Olympic visitors in the streets and congestion and yet there was nothing. When we put up signs on lampposts so that guests could find us either from Hackney Wick station or from the Victoria Gate of the Olympic Park, LOCOG tore them down and so no-one could find us without immense difficulty.
5. The area. Jim White complained about the area he had to walk through from Hackney Wick station to get to us. The Olympics was sold to the tax-paying public on the premise of it being about regenerating east London. That is exactly what Forman’s has set out to do in its own little way. We have made a massive investment at our own cost which results in local people being employed and assists the regeneration of the area. The post industrial zone from Hackney Wick to us is now the creative epicentre of London and it is unfortunate that Jim White only seems comfortable walking in more salubrious areas and thinks we should have to lay on transport specially for him, as he suggested.
6. Personal criticism of Lance Forman. Jim White wrote that I, Lance Forman bragged on TV that “Olympic hospitality would accrue £1million during the Games”. This is factually incorrect too. I said that the cost of the temporary structure for hospitality was in the region of £1m. This is a nasty personal slur. I have taken a risk, employed people, helped to create wealth in a deprived part of East London.
When a newspaper publishes an article by a sports writer, you might at least expect them to get the spelling of the word ‘Olympic’ right. In this hatchet job of a piece even they managed to misspell it as ‘Olmypic’ in the title, perhaps the paper should put its own house in order before it criticises others.
7 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post
Entries RSS 
Ross Gardner said,
August 13, 2012 @ 9:17 pm
Lance,
first let me say I am a massive fan of your firms London Cure smoked salmon and have featured it on menus in my 9 year cheffing career pretty much constantly. I now run my own food truck, Spit&Roast and over the years I have developed a pretty fair understanding of such intricacies as GP, margin & markup. £75 for a breakfast is an abomination quite frankly and you should be ashamed – I have a framed photo at home of Nevio Pellicci and I’m pretty sure you must have known the man. I think he would have been pretty appalled to hear of your restaurants grasping efforts which do your esteemed firm no good whatsoever. To miss out on trade is one thing and to fleece your public is another.
Regards, and please stick to the smoking for there are few better.
Ross
Erik Kennedy said,
August 13, 2012 @ 9:35 pm
Some of these defences sound almost reasonable (esp. pointing out that the drink was unlimited), but it is hard to complain too vigorously when someone slates a £75 breakfast. Anyone can see that it is price-gouging. Whether or not this is okay is a different matter. Jim White obviously thinks that it isn’t. You feel somewhat differently.
And re the typo by the ‘Telegraph’: I would also expect a restaurateur to know that the largest fast food chain in the world is McDonald’s, not ‘MacDonald’s.’
FandF Blog said,
August 14, 2012 @ 8:03 am
Fair cop, but we will wear our ‘MacDonalds’ typo with pride.
DearMrMiller said,
August 14, 2012 @ 3:42 pm
It’s pretty much water under the bridge now. Either way the gamble played by investing in such an expensive venture has for all intensive purposes failed:
1. You received little to no pre-Olympics press. There was no ‘press launch’ and despite claims that Jackie Chan, Michael Phelp’s and Dailey Thomas were there I have yet to come across any photographic evidence. Seeing that celebrity sightings and the accompanying press are pretty much the golden ticket to higher returns in the market that you were aiming towards.
2. As a neighbour living on Fish Island, I would’ve been more than happy to come down for what would been an over-priced cocktail or two to lounge around watching the big screen, however I wasn’t going to pay £30 for the privilege to actually get to them. Nor did I see any come down and check us out for free invites in the post.
3. You had no plan ‘B’ in place when you failed to attract any notice and remained fairly empty over the duration of the Olympics, barring the opening night and closing night parties. I walk by all the time.. so I know it was mostly a ghost town.
4. You’re blaming Jim White and Locog for your own failings to pack ‘em in rather than perhaps reacting to the criticism in a pragmatic manner. So Locog tore down some signs? If you were relying heavily on a few signs directing people, with cash to burn at that, to the Riviera then you’ve failed. So they panned the food and the empty restaurant? Why would folks want to spend £37.50 for breakfast when they could spend less than that that at one of many much finer and much more highly regarded restaurants that London has to offer? What would it have cost to maybe get a Michelin starred chef on board?
5. Price point was way too high. Why would anyone want to, if they had tickets to get into the majestic Olympic Park, want to spend a load of cash to look at the stadium from across the way? I’d want to be in that park, where literally all the excitement was happening as soon as possible, I wouldn’t tally across the way.
6. I think folks saw through all the shots of double magnum bottles of champagne for the money gouge it was set up to be. They’d already been gouged for tickets, been gouged for parking rates, gouged for flights, gouged for hotels and been gouged in so many other ways, perhaps tempering that principle a bit would’ve provided a greater return. Getting folks through the door and speaking highly of it (via social networking, etc) should’ve been your main mission to create buzz as a place to ‘be’ not to get ‘robbed’ in.
7. Lack of ‘events’. You just expected it to be full everyday all day. As you saw with the success of the opening and closing ceremonies folks like to know that there is something going on. There never appeared to be something going on. It was the same menu of Ronnie Scotts and Maddox everyday. Could’ve done a bit more to capitalise on creating nightly ‘events’ with specific bands, cocktails, guests, etc.
It’s all sour grapes now. You aimed high and failed. That’s business. Some businesses in the Wick have done quite well. These were the ones which actually engaged with the local community, who were pretty much the only customers throughout the Olympics. Then there were the ones that spent a load of money expecting to make a load of money without thinking it through properly or perhaps even tempering their greed a bit and it’s not really a surprise that they haven’t done so well. Stick with what you know next time or at the very least pay or partner with people who actually know what they’re doing to do it for you.
noon said,
August 16, 2012 @ 9:06 am
if we’re talking typos:
“vast majority of diners with Forman’s are high complimentary about our food”
FandF Blog said,
August 17, 2012 @ 12:21 pm
Aha, yes, fair cop once again…
FandF Blog said,
August 24, 2012 @ 1:38 pm
1. You received little to no pre-Olympics press. There was no ‘press launch’ and despite claims that Jackie Chan, Michael Phelp’s and Dailey Thomas were there I have yet to come across any photographic evidence. Seeing that celebrity sightings and the accompanying press are pretty much the golden ticket to higher returns in the market that you were aiming towards.
We received plenty of pre-Olympic press including articles in most of the national newspapers including a full page on page 3 of the Evening Standard. Jackie Chan, Michael Phelp’s and Daley Thompson (not Dailey Thomas) were all on our site – please see Facebook page for images of these and other well known sports stars and gold medallists.
2. As a neighbour living on Fish Island, I would’ve been more than happy to come down for what would been an over-priced cocktail or two to lounge around watching the big screen, however I wasn’t going to pay £30 for the privilege to actually get to them. Nor did I see any come down and check us out for free invites in the post.
The entry price was £25 not £35 and most days it included a glass of bubbly free and a free t-shirt. There were three days in which all local residents were allowed in free. This was organized through the people who run Hackney Wicked. We are sorry you did not pick up on this.
3. You had no plan ‘B’ in place when you failed to attract any notice and remained fairly empty over the duration of the Olympics, barring the opening night and closing night parties. I walk by all the time.. so I know it was mostly a ghost town.
We did have a plan B, amongst other things placing large advertisements in the Metro each day, which we did.
4. You’re blaming Jim White and Locog for your own failings to pack ‘em in rather than perhaps reacting to the criticism in a pragmatic manner. So Locog tore down some signs? If you were relying heavily on a few signs directing people, with cash to burn at that, to the Riviera then you’ve failed. So they panned the food and the empty restaurant? Why would folks want to spend £37.50 for breakfast when they could spend less than that that at one of many much finer and much more highly regarded restaurants that London has to offer? What would it have cost to maybe get a Michelin starred chef on board?
We are not blaming Jim White for failing to have more clients. His piece was written at the end of the Olympics. LOCOG, the ODA and the local council made us spend many thousands of pounds in the months prior to let them know how we would deal with the throngs of people on the streets. Complaints from some residents at Ironworks were also based on the many thousands of people being in the area. The fact is the whole area was dead because LOCOG deliberately steered people away from this area and even Hackney wick Station was obliterated from the Olympic map and advertised itself as being closed to Westbound traffic the week before the Olympics started.
I am a strong believer in free speech and Jim White is entitled to whatever views he may have on the quality of our food. What I do have a problem with is that he backed these up with seven lies. We are currently in discussions with the Telegraph’s legal department about this.
5. Price point was way too high. Why would anyone want to, if they had tickets to get into the majestic Olympic Park, want to spend a load of cash to look at the stadium from across the way? I’d want to be in that park, where literally all the excitement was happening as soon as possible, I wouldn’t tally across the way.
There’s no point other people complaining about our price point. They don’t have to come. We are not forcing people to come here. It’s not like train prices when people have no option. The fact is 3000 people chose to come here on the closing night and they had a great time, many telling me personally that this was the best night of their lives.
The Olympics has cost every family in the country almost £500 each, whether they attended or not. This is much more than our expensive breakfast. We sold many lunches and dinners to corporate clients for a few hundred pounds and we have numerous letters from them saying that they had a great time. Our restaurant was aimed primarily at the corporate market and our prices were about 80% cheaper than the official Olympic prices.
6. I think folks saw through all the shots of double magnum bottles of champagne for the money gouge it was set up to be. They’d already been gouged for tickets, been gouged for parking rates, gouged for flights, gouged for hotels and been gouged in so many other ways, perhaps tempering that principle a bit would’ve provided a greater return. Getting folks through the door and speaking highly of it (via social networking, etc) should’ve been your main mission to create buzz as a place to ‘be’ not to get ‘robbed’ in.
Please be assured, the people who came here had a great time. Take a look at our facebook page.
7. Lack of ‘events’. You just expected it to be full everyday all day. As you saw with the success of the opening and closing ceremonies folks like to know that there is something going on. There never appeared to be something going on. It was the same menu of Ronnie Scotts and Maddox everyday. Could’ve done a bit more to capitalise on creating nightly ‘events’ with specific bands, cocktails, guests, etc.
We had the Norwegian beach volleyball team and two of Team GB’s beachvolleyballers here all day engaging with guests and showing them how to play and arranging fun competitions. We also had a giant screen so people could watch the sports. We arranged one of the top live jazz clubs at night so people could carry on the day and indeed some west end music performers got into the spirit and performed spontaneously. We had some wonderful days and evenings, but yes, it was quieter than it should have been as people were being deliberately steered away from the Victoria Gate and told by volunteers that there was nothing going on around here.
It’s all sour grapes now. You aimed high and failed. That’s business. Some businesses in the Wick have done quite well. These were the ones which actually engaged with the local community, who were pretty much the only customers throughout the Olympics. Then there were the ones that spent a load of money expecting to make a load of money without thinking it through properly or perhaps even tempering their greed a bit and it’s not really a surprise that they haven’t done so well. Stick with what you know next time or at the very least pay or partner with people who actually know what they’re doing to do it for you.
I am very proud of what we achieved. We turned a derelict car park into one of the most glamorous places in Europe. So many local people came up to me and asked whether we could keep it as a permanent venue changing the sand to an ice-rink in winter. The whole of London was a ghost town. Indeed a survey has just been issued by the Mayor of Tower Hamlets and 79% of businesses in the Borough said the Olympics had a negative effect on them. We did aim high – you are right. Aim for the moon, as Muhammad Ali said, and you probably won’t get there, but aim for the stars, and you’ll probably get to the moon. I have no regrets and would do the same thing all over again. No sour grapes from my end.