About 20 years ago I met someone in New York who even though we can often go as much as a year without speaking, we still consider soul mates. I was this arrogant git (some will say “what’s changed?” but you should have seen me then) who was going to take the Big Apple by storm and open the first branch of The Cinnamon Club there. A typical example of this arrogance was that alongside meeting landlords, lawyers and architects, I was from the outset interviewing PRs to get profiles of me done. In one firm, I met someone who was so smart, so funny and so charming that I told her she needed to stop working for the clown who employed her and instead start her own firm.

It took a few years, but Becca Parrish set up what has for over a decade been America’s top hospitality PR firm and she hasn’t changed a bit. Nothing has made her ego out-grow her despite representing the country’ most saluted three Michelin star chefs and many loved brands. Once she stared this story with me which is hugely relevant to London’s restaurant scene as I saw yesterday.  She had placed one of her clients onto a high-profile wine tasting competition. On the day, the organisers found themselves one person short for the panel and asked Becca to step in.  She wiped the floor against the alleged (male) experts and shocked everyone in the process.

Yesterday someone posted on Twitter her dismay at a restaurant manager refusing to believe her when she said the wine that she had chosen with her dinner was corked. It takes confidence and knowledge to send back a wine and it takes a high level of arrogance for a typically male manager or sommelier to refuse to accept the opinion of a female diner. Now, it just so happens to be the case that the person his happened to is one of the country’s top food writers, Xanthe Clay.

I imagine this is a common occurrence for female diners.

Hospitality businesses are slowly waking up to culture bias, but this is mainly focussed on who they hire and at what level of seniority. What the sector has yet to do is address the culture bias in how it deals with customers and in the case of women and wine, a little science is worth learning. Women have 50% more neurons than men when it comes to the ability to smell. Walk into the wine lovers’ members club 67 Pall Mall, and you’ll often see half of the members present are women. So, if a female diner says her wine doesn’t smell right, she’s pretty likely to know what she’s talking about.

Thanks, Xanthe for calling this out. It’s a practice I imagine is rife but never really addressed and it’s about time that changed.