Acclaimed chefs and restauranteurs poetically appeal for your support for Food For London Now and capital's hospitality industry

Yotam Ottolenghi, Asma Khan, Stanley Tucci and other acclaimed chefs and restauranteurs have taken part in a poetic appeal to support our Food For London Now campaign and London’s hospitality industry.

Sixty-four celebrity chefs, food writers and restauranteurs took turns to read lines of a poem that celebrates the quality and diversity of London’s restaurant industry.

In a video that included two of the Evening Standard’s renowned restaurant critics, Fay Maschler and Jimi Famurewa, figures appeared in studies, kitchens and outside closed premises to praise the response of restaurants in delivering food to customers and supporting the NHS during the coronavirus pandemic.

The poet behind the elegy, Lucy Golding, told the Evening Standard: “The London food scene is so diverse and incredible, involving so many characters and famous dishes, I had more than enough inspiration to draw on for the rhyme.”

The hospitality industry is the UK’s fourth-largest employer. According to the Office of National Statistics the food service industry has the highest proportion of furloughed workers in the UK, with an estimated 2.4 million hospitality jobs at risk due to the coronavirus crisis.

The Rhyme for London’s Restaurants is an appeal to support Hospitality Action’s Covid-19 emergency relief grant, which offers financial assistance to people from the hospitality sector who have lost their jobs.

Asma Khan, the head chef and founder of Darjeeling Express who has been featured in the Netflix series ‘Chef’s Table’, told the Evening Standard of the need to support restaurant staff: “It was disappointing to see that some restauranteurs and pub owners abandoned their staff.

“The day your lowly paid Kitchen Porter does not come to work is the day your kitchen is thrown into disarray. We all need to reflect on what and who we value in our restaurant.”

The initiative is also supporting the Evening Standard’s Food For London Now appeal, which is campaigning in partnership with The Felix Project to ensure that vulnerable Londoners are able to access food during the coronavirus crisis.

It joins another restaurant initiative supporting our campaign, spearheaded by the Hilton Hotels group, which has opened its conference kitchens across London to store surplus food and prepare meals through social enterprise organisation Open Kitchens.

According to a source at Hilton, the Hilton London Metropole on Edgware Road alone cooked 1000 meals last week for The Felix Project

A Rhyme for London’s Restaurants is produced by Gerber Communications, a public relations company specialising in the restaurant industry.

Golding, who is an account manager at the company, added: “[The poem] evolved into something I was really proud of and wanted to get out there as a way to celebrate and support an industry which is not only my career, but a world I am hugely passionate about and which is going through the roughest period it has ever faced.”

• All money raised by the Rhyme for London’s Restaurants appeal will be divided equally between the Evening Standard’s Food For London appeal and Hospitality Action’s Covid-19 emergency relief grant. Read the full poem here. Find their fundraising page here.

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