Dear Benedict Cumberbatch: I know what you’re having for tea next Sunday. It’s a strange thing to eat a Hollywood star’s dinner a week before they do, but that’s exactly what I’m doing at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London, home of the Bafta Awards dinner on 8 February. Sadly, instead of wearing a Mulberry gown and sipping Taittinger with the Gyllenhaals, I’m in my jeans eating a trio of beef. It is 10.30am. On a Monday.
The logistics of the Bafta dinner would strike fear into the heart of most cooks. A brigade of 25 chefs prepares a three-course meal for 1,950 guests. Those guests, which this year should include nominees such as Keira Knightley, Reese Witherspoon and Eddie Redmayne, will get through 200 magnums of champagne, 1,200 bottles of wine, 1 ton of beef, 100kg of chocolate and 6,000 petit fours. Who says celebrities don’t eat?
I’m hoping for some scurrilous gossip from the chefs who put together the menu – Grosvenor House’s executive chef Nigel Boschetti and Bafta’s head chef Anton Manganaro – that Steve Carrell only eats kale, say, or awards presenter Stephen Fry demands a rider of blue M&Ms and chilled Vimto. Instead, both chefs are frustratingly discreet.
“One British actress just wanted a plate of vegetables,” Boschetti tells me, and there’s another star with a cucumber allergy (insert rude joke here). There’s also “the odd macrobiotic or Paleo,” says Manganaro and, estimates Boschetti, around 150 vegetarians, six vegans and 10 gluten- and dairy-free diets. This seems remarkably unfussy for 2,000 celebrities, but in reality not all the stars bother to get their orders in, and will simply leave anything vaguely carby untouched on the plate (“I was so busy mingling, darling”). Boschetti’s team is braced to deal with last-minute starry demands: “If there’s someone who won’t eat green beans or wants new potatoes not Dauphinoise, we can do it,” he smiles.
The two chefs plan dishes that are substantial but not carb-heavy. One of their tricks is to serve a main with separate components, which looks good and means stars in tight gowns or man-corsets can eat just the elements they want, while those with regular appetites can get stuck in. This year, it’s the aforementioned trio of beef including slow-cooked shin with a bright-green tarragon, parsley and chervil crust. Even on a Monday morning, I could appreciate the juicy and tender beef dishes and the clever take on shepherd’s pie with a tiny dice of carrots and celeriac instead of potato. For pud, there’s a light but intense 90% chocolate mousse with a cacao-nib parfait and trays of “tiddly” Bafta chocs. I ate a few. What can I say? They were good.
This spread is almost six months in the planning – it started in September. Manganaro and Boschetti need to come up with something to keep both hungry awards sponsors and Paleo-dieting actors happy; there are tastings with Bafta execs to get through before the menu is signed off. For the chefs, who want to show off British produce, it’s not easy. Manganaro’s aim of showcasing vibrant purple Lincolnshire sprouts was nixed by execs worried about serving a brassica to the A-List: “The green beans weren’t my first choice,” he says diplomatically. February isn’t prime time for home-grown fruits and veg, so compromises have to be made.
As with any large-scale event, they need dishes that can be prepped in advance and easily scaled up, like this year’s starter – a terrine of crab, with roasted and smoked salmon (“easily”’ is a relative concept – picking all the crab meat will take several days). And aware that Clooney and co won’t be impressed by beige food, they want plates of food that won’t lose their colour. “We avoid anything that will suffer if the speeches overrun,” says Manganaro. “No wilted spinach that can go brown.” Instead, the starter is decorated with edible yellow violas from Lincolnshire, and the main is served with vivid orange baby carrots.
Prepping the dinner starts two days in advance. On the day, Boschetti gets in at 10am to ensure it’s all done by 7pm. Then it’s a case of waiting for those gushing speeches to end and guests to make their way from the ceremony at the Royal Opera House (stars get cars, everyone else comes by coach, no one gets the Piccadilly line). The meal is normally served at around 10.30pm, on place mats printed with images of the Best Film nominees. Which will be tough if, say, you’ve just lost out to Eddie Redmayne (let’s face it, it’s probably going to be Redmayne) for a gong. You’ve gritted your veneered teeth, perfected your well-wisher’s face, dried your eyes in the car over … then you look down and see your victorious rival’s mug grinning from under your iced cacao-nib parfait. Thank goodness for all those magnums of Taittinger and trays of chocs to drown A-List sorrows.
