The sure touch of Frost

Next week Nigel Frost tackles one of the toughest assignments any chef could wish for - cooking for the 400 delegates at the Chef Conference dinner. Janet Harmer went to meet him.

Keeping cool under pressure and being 100% organised are the key characteristics of a good banqueting chef. So says Nigel Frost, executive chef of the Hilton London Metropole - one of the busiest banqueting venues in the capital.

Frost will be drawing on such attributes to the full next week when he oversees the British Meat-sponsored Caterer & Hotelkeeper Chef Conference dinner. It's an event that could bring him up against one of the most critical audiences of the year. Although aware of the importance of the occasion - when so many industry eyes and taste-buds will be dissecting every aspect of the five-course dinner - Frost says it is important that he doesn't get too fazed by the event.

"As always, we'll do the best job that we possibly can," he says. "I have enough friends in the industry who will tell me if we muck up, but I don't expect there to be any problems."

While Frost's approach to the task in hand is almost laid-back, it belies a highly organised mind - something that is essential in order to co-ordinate the major food operation at the Hilton London Metropole. The 1,058-bedroom hotel has 39 banqueting rooms with an annual food and beverage turnover of £14m.

In addition to the banqueting operation, the hotel has two restaurants - Aspects, a 75-seat fine-dining restaurant, and Fiamma, a Mediterranean-style fine-dining outlet that is open all day - as well as Café Cino, the Hilton-branded coffee shop. In addition, there is a sandwich shop, the Lounge operation, providing food and drinks 24 hours a day, and a staff restaurant that serves about 800 meals per day.

An average day will see the service of 800 breakfasts, 400 lunches and dinners, and 2,500 banquet covers, but at peak times as many as 2,500 breakfasts and 4,000 banquet covers can be served.

"When I worked in the Hilton on Park Lane many years ago," Frost says, "things got left to the last minute and we would run out of vegetables in the middle of a major banquet. We can't afford to let anything like that happen here. We always have to work two or three days ahead of ourselves."

Undoubtedly, a major boost to the smooth running of such a busy banqueting operation comes from the tremendous advances in technology over the past 10 years. "Equipment such as the Convotherm combination ovens have made the job - and the lives of all the chefs here - more ordered," Frost says. "They can cope with everything from gentle steaming to a full-on roast, and we now have 30 ovens in place."

Since Frost's arrival in 1991, the hotel has had two major extensions, the most recent costing £100m and creating 400 new bedrooms and two major banqueting suites, with a capacity of 1,200 covers in each. Fortunately for Frost, both development phases have resulted in extensive new kitchens. Frost was involved in their design and is delighted that he has been able to create a comfortable working environment for his brigade of 80 chefs and 70 ancillary staff (including kitchen porters, sandwich makers and storeroom personnel).

"We have plenty of light, and fantastic extraction," he says. "Sometimes it is actually too efficient, and we have to turn it down because there is too much cold air blowing down our backs. It all helps to create a happy working environment, though, and that is reflected in our low staff turnover."

As well as the excellent working conditions, the chefs - together with the rest of the 600 full-time staff at the hotel - enjoy a basic 39-hour, five-day working week. Any overtime beyond that is paid at one-and-a-half times the basic rate.

To promote team spirit, Frost encourages all his staff to take on as much responsibility as possible, to ensure that they have a "can do" mentality. Such an attitude will be vital when it comes to catering for the cream of Britain's chefs at the forthcoming Chef Conference. During the day, the 400 delegates will enjoy a British-themed buffet, featuring market-style stalls serving the best of British cheeses, shellfish and freshly sliced home-smoked salmon, a hog roast and ribs of beef, traditional and new-style sausages, mini hotpots and casseroles, and a variety of trifles, fools, pies and puddings made from indigenous fruits.

The British theme will follow through to the conference dinner, to be attended by 400 guests. Philip Howard of the Square, London, and Michael Caines of Gidleigh Park, Chagford, Devon (both two-Michelin-starred chefs), are working with Frost to produce the menu for the night. Howard is responsible for the first two courses, a consommé of chicken with tarragon foam followed by a lasagne of crab with a mousseline of scallops. The third course - pan-fried sea bass on a bed of fennel and onion confit with fennel cream and a red wine sauce - is Caines's creation.

Pork has been chosen by British Meat, the conference sponsor, to form the centrepiece of Frost's main-course dish. For Frost, it is quite an interesting decision as he rarely serves pork at banquets unless specifically asked. Obviously, pork is not acceptable to Jewish clients, and in fact it is served at only 5% of functions at the hotel.

"Caterers will generally eat what is put in front of them," he says, "but it will be interesting to see how many requests we have for alternative dishes - normally it is between 10% and 15%." Fairfax Meadow is supplying the meat, which comes from a Norfolk-bred Large White and Cotswold cross.

Frost will be serving a pork tenderloin stuffed with prunes, apples and black pudding, accompanied by a Stilton potato scone and a quince and mead sauce. "My most important consideration will be to ensure that the tenderloin is not overcooked," he says. "After being sealed in advance, it will be cooked just prior to service for eight to 10 minutes."

Dessert is being prepared by award-winning pastry chef Claire Clark, who joined the Hilton London Metropole a year ago. "I wanted to do a dish that reflects my speciality - chocolate - and that demonstrates as many different techniques as possible," says Clark, who heads a team of eight in the pastry section. Hence, her symphony of chocolate will include a flourless chocolate cake with a milk chocolate ice-cream flavoured with orange oil and topped with an orange confit, a hot chocolate fondant, a white chocolate mousseline filled with butterscotch and hazelnuts, a bitter chocolate and cherry tart, and a chocolate crème brûlée.

Nigel Frost

After training at Thanet Technical College, Nigel Frost joined the White House Hotel in London's Regents Park as an apprentice chef. After a stint working in Frankfurt for Inter-Continental Hotels, he returned to London to join the Londonderry Hotel (now the Metropolitan) as sous chef.

His first experience working for Hilton was at the London Hilton on Park Lane, before he left in 1981 to become executive sous chef at the Park Lane Hotel. After 18 months, he was promoted to his first executive chef position.

He moved to the London Metropole as executive chef in 1991, to oversee a major expansion of the hotel which included the addition of 300 bedrooms and 20 banqueting suites.

Since he joined the London Metropole, its ownership has passed from Metropole Hotels (whose parent company is Lonhro) to Stakis, and most recently in 1999 to Hilton Hotels.