Delia pays flying visit to Hotelympia

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	Delia Smith on the Parry stand this morning

Caterer.com caught up with cookery writer and TV personality Delia Smith, who is touring Hotelympia today with her team from Canary Catering, caterers at Norwich City football club.
Name
Delia Smith

 

What are you up to?
“Things are going really well at Canary Catering. We’re turning over more than £1.5m a year now and this year we hope to be able to get it up to £2m. We make sure the ingredients are fresh and really try to get as near as we can to home cooking in mass catering.

 

“At the ground, we’re looking to develop our kiosk operations. We’re also looking at soup and ways of containing it and getting it out onto the terraces, and serving food on the perimeters of the pitch.

 

“Some land that belongs to the club is going to be developed into a four-star hotel with about 170 bedrooms and the football club catering will do the catering in the hotel. Eventually we would like to produce meals that go out to other catering venues and outside catering.

 

“We might, in the future, also try a small chefs school. Coming to catering late on, the main challenge I find is getting something to taste the same for 500 as it does for five. The key is to have well-trained people.

 

What do you think of the current state of Britain’s restaurant industry?
“In the Seventies you could run around Britain and you got a lot of amateurs cooking really nice food and I miss that. What you get now is chefs doing the chefs’ kind of food, or else it’s bought in. But sometimes in the pubs they try to be too fancy, when all you want is just a pub meal.

 

“In general, restaurant standards have improved, but I went to a chain restaurant in London the other day after the cinema and the food was evil. When I came out, I said I would have been better off going to McDonald’s, because at least there’s a standard there.

 

“A lot of restaurant customers are discerning now, but there’s still a lot of people who aren’t.”

 

What do you think of the standard of football club catering?
“It really does vary. Sometimes it’s really good and sometimes its horrendous. They have a lot of service problems. It’s very difficult to get good staff if you’re only catering on 24 match days a year. At Norwich we’ve had to build up the conference and banqueting during the week. Then you can build a bigger and better team.”

 

What are you looking for at Hotelympia?
“I’m here with my executive chef Lucy Crabb and catering director Lindsey Greenstead-Beneche and five of our staff today. We’re looking at equipment and picking up ideas.”

• Caterer.com spoke to Delia Smith on the Parry Catering Equipment stand (1371).