Do you get into a bit of a flap when you have a few folks coming round for dinner? Well, how would you feel about making lunch for some 1,100 souls? To be served up in less than an hour? These are the sorts of statistics that catering companies such as the Dublin-based banqueting service, With Taste, have to make sense of. The biggest number it has ever catered for was the biblical number of 5,000 at an international Golden Oldies Rugby dinner, which was held in Dublin in 1993.
Recently, Bord Failte held a two-day Travel Trade Workshop 2000 at the RDS. There were 1,100 delegates, and With Taste provided lunch for each of them, each day. To get some idea of how such a large operation is put together, this reporter arrived at the RDS early on in the morning of the second day of the trade fair.
Lunch was due to be served at 12.15 p.m. The menu for the day was a cold starter of smoked chicken and avocado, followed by beef and Guinness stew with rice, or a vegetarian bean casserole, salads, and little finger desserts of petit fours and tiny pieces of fruit.
9.45a.m.
The Shelbourne Hall is being set up, with some 110 partially-laid tables. In the kitchens, chefs Garrett Connell and Carl Oppermann, have been working since 5.30 a.m, spooning 1,100 avocado and smoked chicken starters into wine-glasses, a fiendish task which has something of the element of those huge tasks set to heroes in fairy tales. The glasses are stacked in containers and waiting in the cool room.
"There are machines for doing some things, but chopping still has to be done by hand," says Fran Murrin, managing director of the company. "No, I would not now feel like eating one of those starters," Connell confesses cheerfully.
The food has been cooked the day before at With Taste's kitchens in Cherry Orchard. The caterers have allowed for about 10 per cent of take-up on the vegetarian option. On the job today are three managers, six chefs, 12 porters, 60 waiting staff and Murrin. In the kitchen there are scores of glass bowls being filled with different types of salad. The main courses are in metal containers, waiting to be transferred to the hall outside.
At the far end of the kitchens, plates of assorted desserts are having icing sugar sprinkled over them. It is pouring relentlessly with rain outside and this is when the very Irish element of the morning becomes evident. There is, bizarrely, no connecting door between the kitchens and the hall. To transfer the food, porters must literally brave the weather, walking outside through the kitchen doors and in again through the hall doors. This is why the pretty little dessert plates will end up on the tables with puzzling patterns of tiny raindrop circles amid the icing sugar.
10.30 a.m.
Laying the tables is like making a jigsaw. Apart from the cloths, each will have cutlery, side plates, serviettes, cups, two types of glasses, flowers, menus, ashtrays, bottles of wine and water, baskets of bread, the starter, three balloons, butter pats on each plate, a jug of orange juice, salt and pepper, and the desserts. It's a lot of things to keep track of for so many tables. The waiting staff shuttle round the room, folding serviettes, setting down baskets, filling gaps in the delph. It's a bit dizzying.
The delph is hired so there is, happily, no washing-up to be done after lunch. Everything gets sent back dirty, which must be a psychological advantage for everyone working at the RDS. There is a corner of the hall which is concealed by black-outs, and behind this the waiting staff drink coffee, slice dozens of French sticks and examine the hand-written list which has just been pinned up and tells them which tables they have been allocated.
At the back of the hall there is a succession of long tables, from which the main courses and salads will be served. Spirit lamps are lit underneath containers of water on which the main courses will sit to be kept warm. Oppermann and Connell are everywhere, overseeing the military-style operation.
10.45 a.m.
Janis Dowling from Balloon Man arrives with hundreds of green and white helium balloons. They are temporarily stored in the corridor outside the hall, while she sorts them into threes and ties them together with ribbon, and places one lot on each table. Hundreds of balloons make their own strange ceiling. If you tied together all the balloons, it's possible there would be enough helium energy to transport a small dog into the Dublin skies.
11.15 a.m:
The starters in their wine-glasses are wheeled out in crates through the rain. "We can't afford any breakages or spillages or there won't be enough to go round," someone snaps. The waiters move round the hall exuding a sense of zen, placing the glasses neatly on each plate.
"Who's on Table 49? There's no cups or teaspoons!" a manager yowls from one part of the hall, and someone comes forward to fill the gaps.
The 60-odd waiters have been arriving in shifts and now all appear to be present. They're like elves, tiny in the huge hall, scurrying from blackout curtain to table and back again.
11.30 a.m.
Group photographs of Murrin and several of the staff are taken from the stage. "I haven't got my Polyfilla on," one waitress laments, fixing her collar. Meanwhile, the chefs are supervising the arrival from the rain-gauntlet of the hot dishes and running up and down the length of the service table with the containers. Waiters are bringing the dessert plates in, holding just one plate carefully in either hand. There are little traces of human error here and there: scattered lettuce on a plate, crumbs on the floor, spoons back to front, the odd wilting flower, but these blips are somehow oddly reassuring.
11.55 a.m.
The white wine is put out on the tables, to join the red already there. People are circling the hall with mobile phones, checking tables, and calling colleagues from across the floor. The servers go to take their places behind the long table. There's a pre-exam type atmosphere in the place. Lids are taken off the hot dishes and the contents are stirred. The first lunch guests slink in the door, obviously giving their noon appointments a miss. They immediately start tucking into the smoked chicken.
12.15 p.m.
An announcement is made over the tannoy that lunch is served. Murrin stands by the door and starts greeting the hundreds who lope in like the expectant, hungry wolves they are: many have been here since 7.30 a.m. Having been here the day before, they know the drill. They sit down, examine the starter, check out the dessert plate, and turn to see what's on offer at the buffet table. Then they start eating and introducing themselves to each other. And in 45 minutes, it's all over.
