OCTOBER 1, 2009 saw the law banning restaurants from using tips and service charge to top up the minimum wage coming into effect. The legislation is being sold to the public by the government as an effort to clarify to diners exactly where the money they leave for waiters and waitresses at the end of a restaurant meal goes. But the legislation remains controversial with the government estimating it will cost the restaurant industry at least £60 million and the British Hospitality Association (BHA) claiming the figure is closer to £130 million.

Meanwhile many waiters and waitresses could actually find themselves worse off as the painfully complicated tax situation regarding tips and gratuities meant they could previously avoid paying National Insurance on a large part of their take-home pay.

In response many restaurants are expected to follow the lead of groups like D&D London, who run 25 establishments across the Capital including Launceston Place, Skylon, Orrery, Le Pont de la Tour, and the Blueprint Cafe, in removing the service charge from their bills, with the exception of large parties.

What’s clear is that the situation still remains rather murky for anyone eating out if this recent code of practice from the BHA for its members is anything to go by.

While restaurateurs worry about the financial implications of the legislation, it’s diners who should be genuinely weary as they’ll inevitably end up footing the bill when the dust settles.

There's perhaps no better illustration of the international, multicultural nature of the modern restaurant industry than Rainer Becker; a German chef who made his name in London serving Japanese-inspired food before taking his high-end restaurant brands, Zuma and Roka, around the world.

Now London's favourite Nipponophile German chef Rainer Becker is to open in the capital again for the first time since launching Roka in Charlotte Street back in June 2004. Since then he's taken his upmarket Japanese restaurant brands to Hong Kong, Macao, Istanbul, Dubai and Scottsdale, Arizona.

Ahead of further international empire building, with a fifth branch of Zuma opening in Miami by the end of 2009, late October 2009 will see the launch of a second London branch of the robata grill-based Roka in the Park Pavilion development overlooking Canada Square Park in Canary Wharf.

Becker will be hoping to do better with Roka than fellow international Japanese outfit Nobu did with their Ubon offshoot, which lay around the corner on Westferry Circus until September 2008 when it shut up shop after seven years, citing a lack of evening trade in the area.

www.rokarestaurant.com

There's an avalanche of food porn out there as publishers flood the market with new cookery books ahead of Christmas. One of the more substantial volumes that will be making a play for a presence on your cookbook shelf this autumn is the updated Gallic retro of I Know How to Cook.

Published in time for Christmas 2009, it's being billed as the 'bible of French home cooking' - with those that do the publicity for cookery books being particularly fond of describing every big book of recipes as a 'bible' of some sort. On that count I Know How to Cook definitely qualifies: a collection of more than 1,400 classic French recipes, from croque monsieur to cassoulet.

It’s the first English translation of 'Je Sais Cuisiner' by Ginette Mathiot, a French culinary legend who had published over 30 cookbooks and rejected seven marriage proposals by the time she died in 1998, aged 91, a unmarried mademoiselle.

I Know How to Cook has sold 6 million copies in France since it was first published in 1932, its recipes cherished by three generations; its title originally meant as a rebuttal to macho world of French cheffery.

Its recipes have been tested and brought up to date by photogenic Parisian food blogger Clotilde Dusoulier of Chocolate & Zucchini fame, so Phaidon are hoping it will be this year's The Sliver Spoon, an Italian volume with similar heft and heritage that did the business when it was first appeared in English in late 2005.

www.phaidon.com
www.chocolateandzucchini.com