Sunday, October 24th, 2010
Readers of IsleOne will know that we’re no fans of Harveys of Ramsgate. And following the news that the restaurant has closed, we learn that it’s not just their food that was so distasteful.
Last September, they put a John Burton-Race £20 scallop dish on their lunch and dinner menus, promising to donate a fiver to the Restaurants Against Hunger charity for each one sold. They were still boasting of their good deeds this week (until their website got taken down). Yet we understand the charity never saw a penny of it – and interestingly they don’t appear on the charity’s list of participating restaurants.
Harveys was part of the Kent Inns of Distinction group, whose venues also include the charmingly named Dog Inn (hot sauce on your windscreen, anyone?). All four of the group’s restaurants claimed to be part of the charity’s scheme, which means that, according to our calculations, if each restaurant sold just four of the dishes per session, that’s 30 days x 4 restaurants x 2 sittings x 4 dishes x £5 = £4,800 which never found its way to the charity.
Restaurants Against Hunger say that £1 allows a farmer to plant enough rice to feed his family for four days. £4,800 would have been a lot of rice for a lot of families.
Nice people. But in a twist, which is presumably of no comfort whatsoever to starving farmers, we hear that Harveys’ owner’s parting shot to a business associate who moved on to work with Eddie Gilbert’s was:
“Eddie Gilbert’s, huh! We’ll see who goes first, shall we? Now fuck off!”
Oh, the irony.
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ECR will be devestated no more mushee pee’s
We’re sorry to hear ECR’s pee was mushee. Sounds painful.
Thanks for this info. We had our wedding at one of the Kent Inns of Distinction restaurants and were treated very shoddily. It’s good to see that what comes around goes around!
Thanks for this info.
Like happy camper, we had a very unfortate wedding experience at a kent inns of distinction venue and ended up taking them to court for what amounts to theft and won.
How sad that they not only steal off their customers but from charity too ……