UK’s star chefs get creative to keep menu prices down

Faced with staff shortages, soaring food costs and rising pay, restaurants are trying out less expensive ingredients

The restaurateur Stuart Gillies is running an unusual cocktail of the week: a delicious-looking Monte Cassino. But what's that got to do with the price of fish?

Everything, as it turns out. Gillies, who ran Gordon Ramsay's restaurant empire for seven years, is using less popular spirits to create something special on a creative menu aimed at saving him and his diners some money. And the same applies to the food. Soaring fish prices have meant he has taken salmon, cod and sea bream off the menu and replaced them with mackerel and hake.