Recently in event catering Category

A friend of Kitchen Rat recently attended an event sponsored by mobile technology giant Blackberry.

Despite the success of the event, eyebrows were raised at the pudding on offer to guests.

When you consider Blackberry's biggest market threat in recent years has been the hugely successful iPhone, it begs the question: who's idea was it to serve apple and blackberry crumble for dessert?

A catering faux-pas or a pastry chef with a sense of humour?

The classic pud is one of the few ocassions these two brand giants are ever likely to be bedfellows, if the following two videos are anything to go by.

Elior development chef Mark Crowe has admitted to having nightmares after seeing the contestants on The Apprentice attempt last week's catering challenge.

Certainly it turned into a bad dream for boys' team leader and hospitality worker Rocky Andrews owner of Fatso's Filling Station, who was fired as a result of his team's efforts.

Crowe told Kitchen Rat: "As a development chef for Avenance, we have many prestigious City companies as our clients and the challenges facing the The Apprentice contestants in last night's episode were very familiar.

"Our City clients demand and rightly expect the very best standards of food and service when entertaining their guests. Last week's programme highlighted just why this should be left to the professionals. I am still having nightmares about the second-rate canapés the teams served, and I certainly won't be using any of them on my new summer hospitality menus!"

Nor will Sir Alan Sugar, one suspects.

The Apprentice Catering challenge>>

Hospitality hopefulls escape the boardroom in the first Apprentice>>

So the heads of state attending the high-profile G20 summit in London's Docklands are to get down to the not inconsiderable task of saving the world economy today.

Well good luck with that one. But it appears the G20 circus has been both feast and famine for the world leaders and those in the hospitality industry.

There was some trouble in the City yesterday affecting Compass Group and Lexington, while later the likes of Barack Obama enjoyed a slap up meal at Downing Street prepared by Jamie Oliver.

The Ritz hotel was one of many taking no chances, electing to board up and hucker down. And thanks to Vacherin for their snap from one of their contracts yesterday that you can see at the top of this entry.

At the Excel Centre at London's Docklands where the summit proper is taking place, it's good news for Compass Group, whose Leith's brand is looking after the feeding duties. However it's not so good for Creativevents who run a number of fixed sites, a stand and on-floor catering at the exhibtion centre on a standard day and have been, essentially, kicked out for the duration.

All around caterers have had to adapt, with Elior, which has many contracts within the City, ordering in extra stock and changing some menus to temporarily make more use of dry and frozen goods in case protests affect deliveries.

Still, with most City clients facing lockdown on the premises, Simon Titchner, managing director at ISS Eaton, candidly told Kitchen Rat: "Actually the protests helped us yesterday as takings were up across the business as all customers used their internal restaurant facilities as they could not go out."

Feast and famine. Feast and famine.

G20 Sumit website>>

World leaders start G20 summit>>

Vacherin appoints head chef for first public restaurant venture>>

Recession presents "great opportunity" for contract caterers to prove worth>>

It's Wednesday night and what does that mean? Yes, The Apprentice is back on our TV screens. And tonight's episode sees the young contestants faced with a particularly interesting challenge: catering.

Sir Alan Sugar will challenge both the male and female teams to set up a catering service for busy professionals in the City. They'll be pitching for lunchtime business and creating menus for a canapé reception, and as well as sourcing the ingredients, they must make, deliver and serve all the food themselves.

"A recipe for disaster," I hear you say? Oh yes!

One of the catering companies involved in the challenge was Red Snapper Events, which lent its kitchens to the male team. Managing director Damian Clarkson told Kitchen Rat "they were hopeless".

"One of their ideas was to serve a peanut butter sandwich on brown bread in a brown box. That's way too much brown and miles off what anyone wants," he said.

Kitchen Rat tried to find out who hosted the girls team, which no doubt had some equally insightful ideas, but The Apprentice PR declined to give out their details.

"Thanks for your request, but I'm afraid we do not give out this sort of information," she said.

It is MI5 stuff so if you know anything, please get in touch. We won't give you up, promise.

Hospitality hopefuls escape the boardroom in the first Apprentice

Contestants at the World Pie Eating competition in Wigan are in uproar because a novice chef has made the pastry cases too large.

Instead of being 12 cm wide,  Emma Garner has shaped shells into 12 in, more than double the intended size.

Covering for her mistake, Garner has made the comment: "If they are champion pie-eaters you would think they would have to eat big pies".

But event organiser Tony Callaghan insists that it was "utterly irresponsible to ask a novice to make pies for the contest.

The contest has been dogged by controversy. In recent attempts to find the greatest pie eater ever the emphasis has switched from volume to speed of consumption. Then, last year a fridge door was left open, and a dog ate many of the pies sitting inside.

Pies matter >>

Good week/bad week >>

Formula 1 is a glamorous circus with a British world champion in Lewis Hamilton and no shortage of razzmatazz and oversized Champagne bottles.

Certainly it's a fast paced, occasionally tedious, sort of do, so you'd expect catering for the British Grand Prix at Silverstone to be an exciting, no-time-to-catch-your breath, sort of affair.

And you'd be right. And then some, if caterer Aspire Hospitality's experiences are anything to go by.

Having won the deal to cater at the circuit in 2007, and another at Towcester race course last month, the relationship so far has been a rewarding one that has, naturally enough, involved a steep learning curve for the newly formed group, which consists of independent caterers.

While you might think that running the British Grand Prix at Silverstone each summer would naturally involve a week or so of preparation ahead of the race weekend itself, the truth is somewhat different.

In fact five-and-a-half weeks ahead of the grand prix in June this year the race engineers turned up to test tyres, smoke and listen to heavy metal (one presumes), in one of those heart-stopping moments that all caterers face at some point in their career.

Although the skills shortage is the much spoken about thorn in the hospitality industry's side it seems for event caterers a shortage of beautiful people can be just as crippling.

There's no point after all in putting together a fabulous party with the cutest canapes and most darling design aesthetic, if Doris the 20-year employee with the weird eye from the staff restaurant is the one offering up the grub on the night.

A recent meeting with an event caterer confirmed Kitchen Rat's suspicions that at most fancy events there are a disproportionate amount of good looking girls and boys waiting on clients than is entirely plausible. Random chance it is not.

Suede's "Oh, hear they come, the beautiful ones, the beautiful ones", could have been playing in the background as the caterer in question conceded sourcing fine looking young things from recruiters was almost as important as sourcing great grub.

Although hospitality's sector skills council is called People 1st, we're not certain this was the thinking behind the name, but it seems for some in the events market the face really does have to fit.