For each £150 donation, Zarach provides a child who needs and deserves a good night sleep with a bed set worth £500: making their day, week, year and Christmas all in one bundle. Throwing its burger-shaped weight behind the cause, Slap & Pickle has launched the #KidsInBlankets charity appeal; pledging to raise enough money to buy 100 beds this December.

25p from every item purchased from Slap & Pickle’s Christmas Menu will go directly to the cause, so there’s no better time to treat yourself to a festive feast. There will also be the opportunity to donate in-house, and customers are most welcome to add their own fundraising ideas to the mix. Want to learn, and do, more? Pop over to www.justgiving.com/fundraiser/kidsinblankets for more information and to make a direct donation. If this has resonated, please do share the love and help spread the word so we can get as many #KidsInBlankets as possible this Christmas.

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For no particular reason, I’ve never quite managed to make it to Rudding Park before, but its reputation preceded it, in particular through the warm words of its close associate Steph Moon, deservedly a Yorkshire legend in her own right, who would be cohosting the event. On arrival we were treated to live jazz and canapés before taking our places for dinner, where I was fortunate to be seated at the head table with both Steph and Peter Banks, the general manager of Rudding Park, as well as a representative from Hospitality Action. With the stage set by a short video setting out the good work that guests would be supporting, the evening was handed over to a series of chefs who would each present a single course.

Truth be told, trying to serve a hundred or so diners in a single seating can be an insurmountable challenge for some kitchens, so I was a little trepidatious that the food would have to be excused as supporting a good cause rather than uniformly exceptional as it turned out. After we enjoyed some delicately shaped and delightfully light honey butter with bread, first up was Luke French from Sheffield’s Jöro who presented a starter showcasing Yorkshire Wagyu beef. Well prepared Wagyu is always a joy but was imbued here with plenty of personality thanks to well balanced additions of onion, truffle, garlic and mushroom. With a scattering of puffed rice for texture, the fermented wild garlic in particular was a powerful flavour that threatened to knock the dish off its axis but just the right amount of restraint kept everything in alignment.

Picking up the baton for the fish course was none other than the esteemed Shaun Rankin, holder of a Michelin Star at his restaurant in Grantley Hall after an impressively short tenure. This was the first time I’ve been lucky enough to enjoy his food, and an impressive introduction it was too with roast turbot falling into conspiratorial harmony with cauliflower, pistachio and pine nut along with a handful of sea purslane. If this is the sort of quality Shaun is able to turn on for a relatively large event, then his eponymous restaurant is certainly unmissable. The final savoury course was in the safe hands of Mark Birchall, whose restaurant may not be in Yorkshire but makes up for that with a brace of Michelin Stars and shelves full of awards. Mark had chosen to highlight deer with vivid red beetroot presented a few different ways as well as kale that I think was braised. Regardless of the cooking medium, it was remarkably deep in flavour. It was left to Callum Bowmer to sign the meal off strongly with a real flourish, using his home advantage as Rudding Park’s Horto restaurant Head Chef to present an apple dish served along with a Jerusalem artichoke ice cream that I would happily eat every day.

While the food was all quite exceptional, the real purpose of the Hospitality Action Chefs Dinner was to raise awareness and funds for that titular organisation. To that end, we were treated to Peter and Steph taking up auctioneer duties, keeping the room flowing nicely while a series of lots attracted a healthy chunk of cash. All in the evening raised nearly £30,000 for Hospitality Action, which will go some way to furthering this great cause. The hospitality industry is very much on a knife edge at the moment, with many challenges to meet in the coming months and years as our society and economy recovers. Do make sure to follow this organisation for more chances to be involved.

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As widely reported last month, TV Chef Tim Bilton has battled on and off with cancer after first being diagnosed with a rare form of melanoma cancer in his eye six years ago.  After initial treatment, he was given the all clear until it came back a second time two years later.  Again, Tim underwent treatment and had operations to tackle the cancer and all was going well until earlier this year when he was sadly informed it had returned, but this time in a much more aggressive form and that it was now incurable.  The support for Tim from the hospitality industry since he shared this news has been overwhelming, with messages of moral support coming in from some of the country’s top chefs including Raymond Blanc and Tom Kerridge.

A fund was set up to help Tim and his wife Adele make special memories with their two young boys and also to help ease financial worries whilst Tim undergoes immune therapy treatment.  Upon hearing about this, chef Adam Jackson sent a message out to the Yorkshire restaurant and hospitality community and the response to support a dinner in aid of Tim and his family was immediate.

Last week the dinner was held at The Park by Adam Jackson in York and was attended by leading chefs and restaurateurs from around Yorkshire with many more who couldn’t make it also generously supplying meals and gifts as auction prizes to help boost funds.  The fantastic meal consisted of Adam’s renowned seven course tasting menu with the full ticket price of £65 per head going completely to the fund.  Dishes included sea trout broad beans peas and mint, a take on Tim Bilton’s signature dish of venison shepherds pie and liquorice; followed by cod, grapes lovage and girole; and pork cauliflower truffle and smoked garlic.  Desserts included lemon pistachio and cherry followed by an Earl Grey raspberry and vanilla pudding and summer truffle, all served with Adam’s pinpoint accuracy of flavour and presentation.

Acting as host front of house was HRH Group’s Managing Director, Simon Cotton, who welcomed the diners and became auctioneer after dinner, where the guests bid for a fantastic array of donated prizes including meals at Winteringham Fields, Skosh, The Burlington at Devonshire Arms, The Star Inn at Harome, Pipe & Glass and the Durham Ox to name a few.  Centrepiece of the lots was an amazing chocolate sculpture (pictured) of chef Tim Bilton in a kitchen kindly created and provided by chef chocolatier Ashley McCarthy of Ye Old Sun Inn at Colton.  The diners generously bid for this as a collective raising over £300 alone and then immediately donating it to Tim so he could share it with his children.

Food writer and photographer Wendy Preston was on hand on the night taking pictures and streaming live Facebook updates to Tim whose health sadly meant he couldn’t make it in person, but he was over the moon by the evening and social media ensured he could be part of the enjoyment without being there in person.

Tim’s wife Adele commented “It’s very overwhelming just how much love and support there is for Tim from his fellow chefs and peers in the industry. We both cannot thank Adam and his team enough for all the hard work that will have gone into to the evening and I’m sorry we couldn’t be there. At what is such a difficult time for us a family, it’s amazing people like all you guys that makes us all smile and be very grateful for each and every day.  As you know Tim is a very proud Yorkshire man and the hardest working man I know. To see him struggle to get out of bed every morning to go out to work to provide for his family just absolutely amazes me. This is what the hospitality industry has instilled into him. You can never ever take the chef out of him. Thank you to all you wonderful people and from the bottom of your hearts we are so very grateful. All our love The Biltons.”

Simon Cotton hosting said, “When Adam approached owner Philip Barker and I last month and said he wanted to put this dinner on for Tim and his family it was an easy decision to say yes and support it and we can’t thank everyone enough for their generous donations including many of our suppliers like Sykes House Farm, Anna Lupton, Hodgsons, Yorkshire Vintners, L’uva Italian Wines & Truffles and Cooper King Gin to name just some.  The response to wanting to either attend the dinner or at the very least provide a prize for auction was immediate and particularly generous and we were delighted that the night has raised over £5,000 for Tim and his family.  The Yorkshire hospitality scene is a very close knit one and when hearing of Tim’s heart-breaking story, it was humbling to see everyone rallying together to lend support.”  Adam added, “I was really touched by Tim’s story; he’s a chef in his forties with a young family. I thought, that could so easily be me and I immediately wanted to do something to help”.

With the generous audience, the evening raised in excess of £5,300 which will be going directly to Tim and his family to help with their memory making.  To help add to this and donate to Tim Bilton’s fund to help create further family memories please click here.

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It’s very clear that we’ve all been (well, most of us) under increased financial pressure over the last few years and this pressure has led to a struggle to make ends meet for a lot of people who’d never been faced with this situation. Couple this with an increasingly punitive benefits system and it probably shouldn’t be surprising that a need has arisen for a service like this.

What this service certainly is not, is an easy option for anyone. This service is manifestly not about providing for people who’ve not shown the wherewithal to help themselves. Access to the York Food Bank services is only through a voucher system, with access to those vouchers carefully restricted to those experiencing a crisis. If you’re still thinking this is an easy option for media invented stereotypes relying on a hand out after spending their allegedly generous benefits on booze n’ fags then kindly step away.

Established 2 years ago in Acomb’s Gateway centre and affiliated with the local church, the York Food Bank has been steadily growing through that time and extending it’s reach further toward those who need it. There are now access points for the food bank in Tang Hall, Clifton and Bell Farm alongside the original service and they stagger their opening to ensure that in extreme cases there’s no need to wait longer than 48 hours to be able to collect a food parcel. Those parcels are not a one size fits all response either, each voucher entitles the bearer to three days worth of food for their household and a couple of hours of discussion about how best to proceed. Just a conversation might not sound like a huge deal, but try and place yourself in that position. Speaking personally, it’d surely feel a great help to have a safe and open conversation away from your circle of friends and family with someone who’s seen this situation before and may have even been there themselves. Again, we come back to stigmatising anyone who needs help and the implied failure that goes with that. Anything that can pull away from those negative connotations really deserves the fullest of support.

All the stock that makes up these parcels comes from public donation and with York being a relatively affluent place donations are not, currently at least, a problem. In fact since January of this year donations have doubled, perhaps in part due to the installation of a permanent collection point in Tesco at Askham Bar. All this would be rather pointless without people to keep things moving though and 150 volunteers give up time to help. It speaks well of the service that that a number of the volunteers are former service users.

Every month around 150 vouchers are distributed, in a large number of cases in response to those suffering benefit sanctions, to an audience that includes many working age single men. I’ll reinforce my point again – this is not an easy option for anyone. That this service has to exist and is so well used is depressing in itself, in fact the greatest side effect of success would be to run itself out of existence. For the moment though donations of food or money are welcome and very much needed. Check out http://york.foodbank.org.uk for info on how to help.

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