How important is menu labelling?

PL: We don’t include nutritional values — you don’t come here to lose weight for sure. But maybe with fast food, it’s good to know what you’re eating.

Some guests do ask for as little fat as possible and you try to make your menu fit. We label alcohol, pork, dairy, wheat.

SA: We always mention the calories on our raw cuisine menus at Sense on the Edge. It is zero fat.

GH: There seems to be a bit of a trend now with some hotels around the world introducing a colour to represent different calorific contents. So if something is reasonably low fat they are giving it zones, you don’t need to read through this endless list of calories and what the ingredients are. If you want to eat something reasonably healthy, go to the green section of the menu. I know in Australia it’s quite popular and it seems to be catching on.

How do you react when a guest wants to order off menu?

SP: It depends how off menu. There is flexibility, you can’t just tell them no.

KP: Some of my European guests know their Thai food very well, if they say the name of a dish I try to cook it for them from the ingredients I have.

PL: It is easier when a guest makes a request in advance. When a guest turns up to the table and says I can’t eat this or this, then their experience is not what it could be.

GH: Especially in Dubai, guests are very demanding, so you have quite a bit of flexibility built into your menu. There’s also guest loyalty. There’s so much competition in Dubai so if you have somebody that is going to come back again based on that one experience [you need to try to meet their requests].

NP: Also if you have a guest the first time with a request, and you go and see him and do want he wants, for sure the second and the third time he will say ‘it’s up to you’.

SP: We’ve got vegetarian menus, but if someone says they are vegan then you just work around it

PL: Yes we’ve got some vegetarian menus, gluten-free is a regular, we have gluten-free bread, we have the canapés all done. We’re making food fresh in the kitchens, we know what’s in everything, so we can modify our menus quite easily.