Food&diningtips

Food & dining tips

CHEF Ray Capaldi has had a difficult time finding decent asparagus this year. He says while tomatoes have shot up in price, the quality has dropped and now most in a box will need some flesh cut out of them. The owner of city eatery Hare & Grace jokes that even the plums he's been getting have been full of water and are so acidic they could strip paint off a car.

And while there has been a marked decrease in the quality of some fresh food being supplied to the restaurant due to weather and floods, the Scottish chef says prices are soaring.

This week, Mr Capaldi and the restaurant's head chef Daniel Schelbert are paying $26 for a box of tomatoes of significantly lesser quality than the ones they were paying $12 for just a few months ago. Spinach, for which they'd usually pay $12 a box all year round, shot up 50 per cent in December to $18 a box.

But they say it is the smaller items, such as spring onions and ginger, that are really hurting margins. Just this week, the chefs were billed $18 for 500 grams of ginger. ''Basically, and it's not just the floods, all year things seem to be becoming more and more expensive,'' says Mr Capaldi.

''You can see that now, just pricing everything, you can see the big difference.''

Floods, weather and now the blast of cyclone Yasi have cut a devastating path through major food-growing regions, putting pressure on prices. An IBISWorld report predicts wholesale price rises of more than 70 per cent for some fruit and vegetable items. While the focus of consumers has been on prices of produce on supermarket shelves, many restaurateurs are feeling the pressure too.

Hospitality consultant Tony Eldred says he expects higher prices. ''We are aware from suppliers that there are going to be price rises in the range of 20 to 70 per cent, depending on what the product is.''

Any food price rises, coupled with labour and rent costs, will cut into already slim margins, he says. ''The prices restaurants are charging for food now is not reflecting the price of putting the food out. Margins have got to the point where it is hardly worth running a restaurant.''

Mr Eldred says restaurants may be forced to lift their own prices. ''I think we are looking at price rises of 20 to 25 per cent - in good restaurants that will push mains up to the $50 mark.''

Restaurant & Catering Victoria chief John Hart says margins have been about 29 per cent for the past 10 years. Like past spikes in food and wage costs, he says restaurants will juggle and absorb rather than lift prices. ''Essentially what they will do is look for alternatives and they will re-engineer their menus to work to those alternatives.''

Restaurateur Matteo Pignatelli says while some foods have risen in price, others, like seafood, have fallen. He changes the menu accordingly. ''We've got more seafood, because it's cheaper at the moment, and taken off things like banana and all the stuff that you can't get.''

To combat rising prices, Mr Capaldi and Mr Schelbert are also revising their menus. They're also rethinking portion sizes. ''We'd rather change the dish then put up prices.''

Each day at the Collins Street eatery is a careful juggling act where food, creativity and the accountant's eye are used to keep prices steady. Nonetheless, both Mr Capaldi and Mr Schelbert view working with higher food prices as both a challenge and ''good fun''. It is clear that not even bean counting in the kitchen can ruin their passion for cooking.

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