We’ve been working with Chef Andrew Dargue, the man behind gourmet London vegetarian restaurant Vanilla Black. He is a food genius who has perfected the art of creating amazingly delicious food that just happens to be vegetarian.
One way that we work with him is through hosting Demo Days – where we welcome chefs (and front of house) to Vanilla Black, where they enjoy a hands-on day seeing and experiencing vegetarian food and leave inspired around how to recreate vegetarian dishes within their own catering operation.
Our last Demo Day was the other week, where our very own Chairman Tim Cookson and Andrew Dargue welcomed 10 chefs and front of house staff from Oxford University’s Magdalen College.
The day kicked off with a treasure hunt around Borough Market, where the participants hunted for vegetarian produce. They then returned to the kitchen and split into working groups where they had time to view the grow station of micro-herbs (it has its own sunlight and water supply), hold a Q&A with Andrew’s chefs about all things vegetarian, watch them create the dishes and then enjoyed a three course meal.
The session finished with Andrew talking to them about his inspiration behind Vanilla Black – and importantly, how they can go away and bring more vegetarian food into their menus without ‘being boring’ and keeping within budget. Sounds simple but you’d be surprised how many chefs find this quite difficult to achieve.
It’s this ‘experience based’ activity that we like to offer our clients – the feedback from the Demo Days so far has been overwhelmingly positive.
If you’d like to come along to our next one, then then us know here.
The Litmus team