Your catering disaster stories
Discussion
I was recounting a tale of woe to a couple of mates earlier about a terrible catering faux pas I made as a teenager left in charge of feeding 20 or so victims in a pub. I thought I’d share it. Can you do better? Or worse, as the case may be?
The pub landlord and chef had gone off on a holiday to Benidorm or similar leaving a temporary manager and me in charge. We stopped all food service, for good reason as neither of us could cook, however a long standing commitment to Lions / Rotary club meant we had to do something. Instructions were left: breaded garlic mushrooms with side salad to start, followed by quiche and new potatoes. What could go wrong?
The quiches (Bookers, natch) went into the ovens and the spuds went on to boil. We plated up all the salad for starters and fired up the fryers for the mushrooms.
At the appropriate time (as indicated by the absent chef) the mushrooms went into the fryer. All the breading promptly fell off (presumably because the oil hadn’t been changed forever). We dispatched the now mostly un-breaded mushrooms into the bin and pondered our next move.
There was ample Bookers scampi in the freezer so we figured that a pivot to a fish based starter could save us.
Meanwhile the new potatoes were cooked so I turned off the gas.
Into the fryer went the scampi. Moments later the breading disintegrated and fell off. Into the bin went the scampi. f
k.
The barman was dispatched in his XR3i to the supermarket to get some tinned mushrooms. We’d serve those up with the salad.
After announcing a “short delay” to the funny handshake contingent, the barman reappeared and we decanted 4 tins of mushrooms into a bowl and delicately microwaved them before dishing up with the salad.
Disaster! Insufficient mushrooms. Simply not enough to go round and no time left to go and buy more tins.
But wait! The breading on the original mushrooms might have failed, but surely the inner mushrooms would be ok?
Out of the bin they came, and were given a cursory rinse before being dumped onto plates. The relief manager took on waiting duties while I turned my attention to plating up the quiche.
Now you’ll remember that earlier I had turned off the heat on the boiling spuds. But as a naive teenager I hadn’t realised that leaving them in gradually cooling water was a recipe for disaster.
Alongside the dry and charred quiche was a slushy mess of Jersey Royals.
Some 20 minutes later, after serving the disastrous quiche to the Quakers or whatever the hell they were, the head Rotarian sheepishly entered the kitchen to enquire as to the whereabouts of dessert. He was met with me and the relief manager sitting on the kitchen worktop smoking Marlboros and laughing hysterically.
Unsurprisingly, the landlord and chef returned a few days later to a letter informing them that the Lions or Rotarians or whatever strange handshake people they were, would not be frequenting our establishment any further.
The pub landlord and chef had gone off on a holiday to Benidorm or similar leaving a temporary manager and me in charge. We stopped all food service, for good reason as neither of us could cook, however a long standing commitment to Lions / Rotary club meant we had to do something. Instructions were left: breaded garlic mushrooms with side salad to start, followed by quiche and new potatoes. What could go wrong?
The quiches (Bookers, natch) went into the ovens and the spuds went on to boil. We plated up all the salad for starters and fired up the fryers for the mushrooms.
At the appropriate time (as indicated by the absent chef) the mushrooms went into the fryer. All the breading promptly fell off (presumably because the oil hadn’t been changed forever). We dispatched the now mostly un-breaded mushrooms into the bin and pondered our next move.
There was ample Bookers scampi in the freezer so we figured that a pivot to a fish based starter could save us.
Meanwhile the new potatoes were cooked so I turned off the gas.
Into the fryer went the scampi. Moments later the breading disintegrated and fell off. Into the bin went the scampi. f
k. The barman was dispatched in his XR3i to the supermarket to get some tinned mushrooms. We’d serve those up with the salad.
After announcing a “short delay” to the funny handshake contingent, the barman reappeared and we decanted 4 tins of mushrooms into a bowl and delicately microwaved them before dishing up with the salad.
Disaster! Insufficient mushrooms. Simply not enough to go round and no time left to go and buy more tins.
But wait! The breading on the original mushrooms might have failed, but surely the inner mushrooms would be ok?
Out of the bin they came, and were given a cursory rinse before being dumped onto plates. The relief manager took on waiting duties while I turned my attention to plating up the quiche.
Now you’ll remember that earlier I had turned off the heat on the boiling spuds. But as a naive teenager I hadn’t realised that leaving them in gradually cooling water was a recipe for disaster.
Alongside the dry and charred quiche was a slushy mess of Jersey Royals.
Some 20 minutes later, after serving the disastrous quiche to the Quakers or whatever the hell they were, the head Rotarian sheepishly entered the kitchen to enquire as to the whereabouts of dessert. He was met with me and the relief manager sitting on the kitchen worktop smoking Marlboros and laughing hysterically.
Unsurprisingly, the landlord and chef returned a few days later to a letter informing them that the Lions or Rotarians or whatever strange handshake people they were, would not be frequenting our establishment any further.
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