QUALITY restaurants are overfeeding customers with three - course set meals, because the food is just too attractive.

'It becomes difficult to skip a course,' says one of the North West's most prominent hoteliers, Ahmet Kurcer, 'but restaurants should beware of falling out of step with modern eating habits.

'Many customers are watching calories and cholesterol and it's wrong to tempt them to eat too much. If they want to cut down the quantity of food they consume, and satisfy their appetite within a personal comfort zone, they should be given every assistance - without losing out on the sheer pleasure of high-class cuisine.'

That is why Ahmet, General Manager of the prestigious Alderley Edge Hotel, has abandoned the 'three-course meal' option, along with separate lunch and dinner menus, in a single complete re-think of the hotel's Alderley Restaurant.

Head chef Chris Holland and his team have developed a unique new menu that combines a la carte and table d'hote into a wider range of smaller, high quality dishes that offer the flexibility for customers to scale their meal up or down to meet health, weight or dietary concerns.

And the relaxation does not end there. Formal bow-tied and waistcoated waiters are now wearing Swedish-designed uniform in keeping with a youthful team headed by food and beverage manager, Jamie Thistleton.

'The traditional standards of the Alderley Edge Hotel are as high - or even higher - as they have ever been,' says Ahmet Kurcer, 'but there are new patterns of eating Char. have placed different demands on all fine dining menus. Like many people who enjoy good food, I don't eat very much because I need to be aware of weight and health issues.

'We began to address this 12 months ago and our new menu now defines a totally fresh concept that I believe is unique.

The restaurant policy of buying fresh local ingredients is apparent from the initial range of breads and three home-made butters, starters such as the terrine of quail and rabbit with carpaccio of English beetroot and orange salad through to the crufFled goat's cheese rarebit dessert with pickled wild
mushroom and black pepper balsamic, supported by the usual list of over 500 wines and more t an 100 champagnes.

 
Ahmet, with a lifetime career in the food and beverage industry including 35 years in Manchester and Cheshire, feels the new approach is 'absolutely the right blend of experience, knowledge, creativity and innovative ideas.'

At the centre is the 'outstanding aspirational chef who has raised the bar for fine food menus.

Chris Holland has been at the Alderley Edge Hotel for nine years and was appointed head chef 18 months ago. His signature dishes are traditional British classics, refined, lightened and given an often extravagant twist that uses textures and releases flavours to upgrade the original.

Such as his native Lancashire hot pot - different cuts of lamb neck and shank, slowly braised for 12 hours and topped with potato that has been braised in the meat juices and layered with a lamb confit so that even the topping alone carries the flavours of the whole meal.

Chris' roasted plum tomato and basil soup has a balsamic jelly that sits on top for the customer to stir in and create individual pockets of flavour.

And even his 'simple' mixed salad has 15 or 16 different elements balancing the flavours of young vegetables, poached in stock, ingredients such as soft boiled egg and asparagus, with seven or eight different leaves.

Cheshire Life June 2006