London Cateriing of fine food

Its 5am on a chilly winters morning and the kitchen team are arriving to start preparing the food for the days orders.

Head chef, Jose, takes delivery of the day's ingredients, such as fresh olive breads and foccacias, and specialty breads for the day's platters. Paulo prepares the delicious finger items that accompany the specialty breads on the working lunch menus for our clients. For Monday he is preparing king prawn parmigiano skewers with basil mayonnaise, chicken skewers with pesto and mini tomato and mozzarella pizzas.

The Kitchen work hard to meet the 10am deadline, at which point the company's experienced transport team, is ready to dispatch the day's orders all over London. It is a task for drivers with good nerves, humor, and years of experience in handling London traffic and with knowledge on the level with black cab drivers of London's street. Each driver has an area in London that they are allocated to deliver to. This is often a tight schedule to make deliveries before 12pm, but our team work hard and know the best routes to get to our clients on time, whilst contending with traffic, road works and loading bays.

Once the lunch deliveries are made the drivers collect the equipment and plates from the previous days delivery.

When the kitchen has cleared down from the morning preparations, it is time to start cooking the fresh food for evening receptions and dinner for hundreds of guest at various venues. Jose and the team are today preparing over 500 intricate canapés such as quenelle of white crab with chilli and coriander and beef carpaccio, followed by a 3 course dinner of slow roasted guinea fowl with apple and hazelnut dressing, roast rack of lamb, served with pommes dauphinoise, seasonable vegetables served with a redcurrant jus and dessert of warm pecan pie served with vanilla cream.

In the office the admin team are taking the new orders for the coming weeks and processing the information to create order confirmation forms to send to clients, kitchen order sheets for the food and delivery notes for the drivers. Before the end of each day a delivery schedule needs to be produced for the next day, with particular detail to the areas and timings of deliveries.

Clients are also calling to discuss bespoke events for which a proposal needs to be produced, menus need to be suited to the type of event and equipment hire and staffing costs calculated to give the clients a full breakdown of requirements for their event. Previous proposals that have been sent out are followed up and clients contacted to try and win the business from rival caterers.

In the afternoon, our event manager, Remo sets out to the events venues for the evening dinner, ready to receive staff and the food and equipment delivery. There is a strict set up time at the venue of one hour and the staff will have to work efficiently to set up the tables for hundreds of guests to arrive for the pre-dinner drinks reception by 6.30pm. Remo starts by addressing the staff and allocating jobs and tables to small groups, the equipment is already separated into table boxes which contain linen, cutlery, cruet sets, table numbers, wine and water glasses for 10 guests per table. The chefs have also arrived on site with the prepared food and are ready to start plating up the starters ready to be placed on the tables before the clients sit to eat. At 6.30pm the tables are set and the waiting staff are assigned as either canapé waiters or drinks waiters. Trays of drinks are prepared ready to be served to guests as they start arriving and circulated throughout the reception. Canapés are also served on slate trays decorated with colorful flowers.

At 7.30pm the guests are asked to move into the main events space which was set up ready for the 3 course dinner and are seated with the starter of Slow roasted Guinea Fowl salad is already at each guests place. Vegetarian guests are also catered for with a delicious Smoked mozzarella with glazed figs and rocket salad. The starter is cleared away by the waiting staff the main course is served plated up and hot from the kitchen, the roast rack of lamb with potatoes dauphinnoise is greatly received by the guests and the vegetarian option is Portobello mushroom with goat's cheese and spinach stuffing en croute. Again the main course plates are cleared quickly and efficiently and the pecan pie is then served to the awaiting guests and waiting staff begins to circulate with coffee and petit fours to finish the evening.

When the speeches have been completed and the coffee and dessert consumed the guests begin to leave and the waiting staff are ready for Reno's instruction on the breakdown for the evening.

The event has hopefully been a real success and has run smoothly with thanks to the dedication of the team and the organizing prior to the event. All equipment must be cleared and counted so that nothing is missed, linen packed into containers ready to be cleaned and the tables and chairs cleared from the event area.

The teams of chefs clear down the kitchen and all surfaces are cleaned, swept and mopped. Cucina driver is on hand to load up the delivery van and the final job for the evening is to return the equipment to the London premises ready to be cleaned and prepared for the next day's event.

The staff returns home. Next morning it starts all over. Just another day.

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