Though she couldn’t be at the ceremony, Rosie Mitchell in her welcoming remarks, thanked and paid tribute to Conelia Mabasa, the Senior Sub-Editor who lays out these pages. “Conelia is a great team player in the whole Zim on a Plate exercise. . . The deadlines are always tight, and circumstances can conspire against us, with reviews arriving late. She is very patient with us and she does a great job,” said Mitchell.
The Standard and The Cheeseman have together been synonymous with the Restaurants of the Year Competition, since 2002 when it was first launched, and Zim on a Plate in its current format has now entered its sixth year — and is going strong! The Zim on a Plate Restaurant Guide carried weekly here is arguably the most sought after and definitive guide to our country’s restaurants available today, and is widely used as a diner’s bible.
The Standard is the perfect weekend newspaper through which to reach the dining public who avidly follow the competition and rely on these reviews to inform their decisions about where to go to eat, and which restaurants to try out for the first time, all based on informative reviews in these pages. It’s a win-win situation all round, for the newspaper, the sponsors, the restaurants themselves, with all the free publicity enjoyed through entering in the first place, and finally, the dining public.
“I’d like to thank The Standard for their year-round on-going contribution to this high profile competition, in the form of the very best medium through which Zim on a Plate can speak to the public,” said the competition manager.
“This is a competition which has certainly gained full respect and credibility among both the trade and the dining public at large, and part of that credibility comes as a result of being published in such a respected independent newspaper. The rest comes from the efforts that have been made to ensure the highest level of objectivity possible, in the way the competition is run.”
In his following speech, Raphael Khumalo, CEO of Alpha Media Holdings, added further weight to the view that Zim on a Plate has become a highly respected and reliable source of information on restaurants across the country, what they have to offer, and the guide, a most valuable reference source for the dining public at large. — Own Correspondent
