Top of TripAdvisor charts, prison restaurants with a panic button for diners
FOR a top dining destination, the decor is unconventional, with bars on the windows and panic buttons on the walls.
Guests also have their phones confiscated and they are security-screened in advance.
But The Clink restaurant chain, which operates at four prisons in England and Wales but is open to the public, is beating establishments by celebrity cooks.
And according to TripAdvisor, three of the restaurants – which aim to rehabilitate prisoners by training them for the food industry – are rated No 1 in their local areas.
HMP Styal, a women’s prison in Wilmslow, Cheshire, is top out of 62 restaurants. HMP Cardiff, a Category B jail, is first out of 943 and HMP High Down in Surrey beats 134 other restaurants. HMP Brixton is rated London’s third best restaurant out of 18,161, beating the likes of Michel Roux Jr’s Le Gavroche and Gordon Ramsay, who has three Michelin stars. Dishes are cooked and served by inmates. Main courses include turbot with crushed purple potato and slow cooked lamb pot pie, celeriac mash and glazed carrots for £17.95.
Starters include pigeon, black pudding and smoked bacon lardon salad from £5.75.
However, there is no alcohol on the menu and diners use plastic cutlery. Inmates with six to 18 months left of their sentence can apply for the scheme, which started in 2009. About 160 at a time take part. A report last year found that The Clink reduces male reoffending rates by 41 per cent. High street chains Wahaca and Carluccio’s have taken Clink graduates, as have top hotels.
One reviewer, who went to The Clink in Cardiff, wrote: ‘I thought we would be served by murderers, serial killers and such like. Not the case. Very handsome and chic young men.’
Chris Moore, chief executive of The Clink Charity, said: ‘We’re helping people understand how important a part education and work plays in reducing re-offending rates.’