At home with the stars
The ingredients for the meal for 4,000 included:
45 gallons olive oil
200lb black olives
3 gallons three-year-old balsamic vinegar
200lb dill pickles and capers
800lb salmon
1,000 eggs
1,600 chicken fillets
600lb beef
1,282lb tomatoes
1,200lb asparagus
3,200 Little Gem lettuces
l Executive chef John Walker calculated that if just one chef had to cook the meal it would take five-and-a-half months to prepare.
CATERING for 4,000 people in one evening is a momentous task in itself, but add to it the fact that you have just one-and-a-half hours in which to serve seven courses and your customers include the likes of Robbie Williams and Cher, and you begin to have an idea of the challenge faced by event caterers At Home last month.
For the second year running, the Surrey-based company had been asked to provide the catering for guests attending the £500-a-head Brit Awards at the London Arena in the Docklands. "The main focus of our business - around 80% - is the music industry," explains At Home managing director Marilyn Newman. "All the members of the British Phonographic Industry's Brits committee are our clients and they decided, since they used us for themed parties and other events, to try us at the awards."`
Newman accepts it is not the food which draws people to the event. "The show is the attraction," she says. "The food is peripheral, but they expect it to be perfect and if it's not they will moan about it. These people are used to eating at such places as the Mirabelle and the Ivy and expect the same standard here. They don't consider the fact that we are serving 4,000 people."
Constructing the menu, then, was quite a task and one which began last September. With such a large number to serve, Newman decided on a table buffet where the waiter brings the dishes to the table and guests help themselves. It is a formula which worked well at the same event last year, although the theme this year is to be different: US cuisine instead of Moroccan/Mediterranean food. Newman also decided that of the seven dishes, only one would be hot. "Expectations are high, so I would rather serve really fantastic cold food," she explains.
Special dietary requirements
There are also special dietary requirements to take into account. "Sixty per cent of the music industry is vegetarian and some are vegan," explains Newman, adding: "We aim to offer a selection of different things such as vegetables, fish, cheese, and non-dairy products." (See panel on page 60 for menu.)
Once the recipes had been selected, a team of chefs, including executive chef John Walker and head chef Jeremy Palmer, conducted trials. For instance, the tomato, basil and olive tapenade bruschetta amuse-gueule - placed on the table before guests arrive - was timed to see how long it could sit before the tomato made the bread soggy.
Thus, by the time the awards day dawns on Tuesday 16 February, two salad dishes - a chargrilled chicken Caesar salad and a Chicago-style tenderloin of beef on a cherry tomato, green bean and new potato salad with a horseradish rémoulade - need only to be assembled at the last minute.
The chicken, after being marinated in honey, lime and garlic for 48 hours, was chargrilled the previous day and is to be served on the night in bowls resting on Little Gem lettuce, accompanied by a Caesar dressing, shaved Parmesan and croutons. The beef, too, was cooked, rare, the day before and cooled ready for topping the niÁ¡oise salad at the last minute.
The menu's one hot course is a pasta dish - penne with a tomato and fresh basil sauce and containing roasted Mediterranean vegetables including aubergines, courgettes, red peppers and caramelised onions. Twelve hundred pounds of asparagus, which arrived at Heathrow airport from Mexico on the Sunday and has been cooked off on the morning of the awards, will be served cold, dressed with chopped egg, chopped parsley and a French dressing.
Satellite kitchens
By 10am on Tuesday a team of 14 chefs are busy assembling the dishes. The pasta has been cooked off and mixed with the vegetables, and its sauce is heating up in bratt pans. The two will be mixed later in the afternoon and transported in bain-marie containers to hot cupboards in two satellite kitchens situated either side of the auditorium. From here, the front 205 tables and 56 VIP boxes will be served. All food needs to be dispatched to the satellite kitchens by 5.30pm when guests will start arriving.
The remaining 164 tables are the responsibility of the main kitchen, which had to be constructed specially for the event - there being no permanent kitchen facilities at the arena - and is housed in a marquee with equipment supplied by PKL. The service has been planned with the precision of a military operation, a necessity in such difficult circumstances. "It will differ from a usual banquet in that tables will sit at different times, so service will be staggered, as in a restaurant," explains Newman.
"Dinner is supposed to be served at 7pm and finished before the show starts, but many guests won't sit down on time because they'll be busy networking. Some may still be eating when the show starts so we will have to decide whether to carry on serving during the show. It is important not to get in the way of the television cameras."
The auditorium is divided into 12 tiers labelled A to L with varying numbers of tables, seating either 10 or six, on each tier. There is one supervisor per half-tier and three waiters per two tables. "On a table where the guests are existing clients of ours, we try to give them a waiter they know for a more personal touch," says Newman. To spot any potential problems and solve any which arise, 17 managers, of which Newman is one, will be roaming the tiers armed with walkie-talkies.
One lesson learnt from last year's event was that the two front table tiers need extra staff to look after them. "That's where the serious VIPs are and they are there to network so they never sit down," explains Newman. "We've doubled the staff ratio to one waiter per five covers to cope with the fact that they all sit to eat at different times."
At 5pm the sauce is mixed into the pasta by Palmer, covered with foil and transported to the satellite kitchens. By 6pm the only dishes left in the main kitchen are those to be served directly out of it. There are six chefs left - the others have been dispatched to the satellite kitchens - and they are busy setting up the pass with a row of stainless-steel trestle tables. At this stage, everything has run like clockwork and with just under an hour to go before service, there is time to break for some much-needed refreshment in the form of cans of pop and bags of crisps.
The frenzy begins just after 7pm when a stream of waiters hurry in to collect plates of salmon and baskets of tortillas and salsa to take to their tables. From this time onwards the stream is constant in all three kitchens but the various times taken by individual tables to consume each dish - served two at a time - mean that, at any one time, there are waiters collecting any of the six dishes.
By 7.50pm it becomes apparent that service will not be completed by the start of the show at 8.30pm. Newman takes the decision to continue serving since, because of the increase in traffic due to a Tube strike, many guests were late arriving. "I have to consider that these people have paid £500 a head, so do I say to them, ‘Sorry, dinner's off'?" she asks. Desserts start to go out at about 8pm and are still being served when Robbie Williams opens the show half-an-hour later.
"It's gone very smoothly and reaction to the food has been amazing," says a delighted Newman when the evening is over. "This is exposure to our best customers - it's disaster if you screw up, but when it goes well it can bring in more business." n
