'Sometimes I wonder if we're getting just too clever,' says Lucy Gemmell as she surveys the bustling kitchen of Rhubarb Food Design. It is quite a sight: twenty-four cooks preparing canapes for the 2,000 guests at the party after the James Bond premiere.
There are tiny Jersey new potatoes hollowed out and filled with turkey, sage and pancetta; wild mushroom tarts; tiny little Cumberland sausages with mash; crisp parmesan wafers. The fishmonger arrives with crates of Maine lobsters (Gemmell regularly caters for Pierce Brosnan and Keely Shaye Smith and knows they are great seafood fans), a chef is already shelling langoustines. Allowing around 10 eats per head that's 20,000 items, each individually made. Add to that the fact that Rhubarb's kitchens are in south London and the party is in a tent in Hyde Park. Beautiful, stylish canapes are not good travellers - we're not talking pineapple on a stick here. So the trays are prepared, refrigerated, loaded onto a refrigerated van and finished on site.
'A-list celebrities don't queue for food,' says Gemmell. 'They will arrive at the tent at 10.30 after the premiere and they will immediately want a drink and something they can eat while holding a glass.'
She breaks off to phone her PA at the Hyde Park site to remind her that Halle Berry only drinks apple martinis. On such detail are successful companies founded, and they don't come more highly recommended than Rhubarb. Founded six years ago by Gemmell, it had a £5 million turnover last year.
This year Gemmell has done the Elton John Aids Foundation party at the Natural History Museum ('a logistical nightmare. We're let in at two minutes past six and have an hour and 10 minutes in which to get things - including a catwalk - ready'), premieres for About a Boy, Die Another Day and Bombay Dreams, and parties for Hermès, Graff, Wafir Said, and the Lloyd Webbers.
Detail is all in this business. Just as the canapes must be minutely dressed and finished moments before being handed round, so must the psychology of the food and party work. As Gemmell points out: 'You've walked out of the most buzzy film in the world, across a wet road and into a party. You're not going to be the one that talks to Halle Berry, you're the sad one in the corner, so to stop that feeling you must have a fantastic atmosphere and immediate hospitality.'
To achieve this, she and her staff will put in an 18-hour day, a schedule made possible by her cheery children, great nanny and laid-back Australian husband. Plus an original career eventing horses that has stood her in good stead for stamina. That ended when she broke her back, and as she'd always cooked the meals for other riders and trainers, after a stint in Australia she joined one of London's largest party planners and caterers, the Admirable Crichton.
Six years ago she founded Rhubarb, which quickly became the cool company to call in for your party.
Fashion in canapes is fickle, and Rhubarb continually update their menus which offer a huge range of ideas from tiny soup sips in shot glasses, sage and onion beignets with cranberry sauce to miniature plum pies. Yet despite maintaining a vast and versatile menu, Lucy often gets asked for old favourites like tiny fish and chip portions in cones. 'I need to remember that what seems old hat to me because we've prepared it so often, may only been seen a few times by people.'
