How John Williams served the Cateys a touch of Ritz glamour

The Caterer's editor James Stagg asked if he would devise a menu in this milestone year, the pair discussed the individuals who had travelled through his kitchens.

Accordingly, Williams made some phone calls and arrived at Grosvenor House, a JW Marriott Hotel, on Tuesday 4 July with an enviable brigade that included nine former colleagues.

Those joining their mentor included Adam Byatt, chef-proprietor of Michelin-starred Trinity in Clapham, Martyn Nail, former executive chef of Claridge's hotel in Mayfair, and Tom Phillips, executive chef of Restaurant Story in London Bridge.

The special guests joined a brigade of 11 from the Ritz London and Grosvenor House's banqueting don Nigel Boschetti who, with his team, was able to advise on the pitfalls ahead when catering for 1,000 covers under serious time constraints.

When Williams had first contemplated the task his primary concern was sourcing produce of the quality essential for his menu, at the scale needed for the event. He explains: "Everything lives or dies on the quality of the ingredients. It's a big number to get 1,000 plates correct, so it's about making sure you have enough of each ingredient coming in of the same quality."

The scale of the event meant dishes also needed to be simplified, to ensure they could be served at the right temperature and to Williams' exacting standards. He adds: "A lot of our dishes in the restaurant are very complex so it was really stripping everything back and coming up with a menu that was going to work."

Luckily for the Cateys' guests, Williams wasn't able to play it quite as safe as he would have liked, with his chefs insisting that boulangère potato accompany the main course of lamb saddle fillet, despite his reservations.

He explains: "I said ‘no, I'm not doing it' and they said ‘we're doing it chef'. I'm fairly cautious after doing this for quite a while, but they persuaded me.

"The thing is the potatoes are sliced very thinly on the mandoline and then they have to be rolled into a cylinder – it's a lot. But they dragged me along. That's the good thing about youth and enthusiasm and I think it's important to recognise that there are some great young people in our industry. We're forever knocking them, but I know there are some bloody good people."

Fresh start

The first course served by the team was a Parmesan cream with a tomato jelly flavoured with basil and finished with a basil emulsion, basil oil and a Parmesan tuille.

It was adapted from a lobster dish served at the Ritz London restaurant, exemplifying the clean, classic flavours and techniques that epitomise Williams' cooking. The chef says: "In the restaurant we have lobster in the centre and we serve a consommé of tomato with the same basil emulsion and dressed in a similar manner with herbs. But we needed the dish to be suitable for so many people and to work with dietary requirements."

Timings for the dish were crucial, as was ensuring everything could be served at the correct temperature. Here Boschetti and his team proved invaluable, their advice seeing some 12 chefs assembling the dish in walk-in refrigerators for "a good few hours".

Those team members bracing themselves against the chill were not the only ones who went the extra mile to ensure the Cateys went off with a bang. Two weeks before the event the team had ordered rubber mat stencils to create the Parmesan tuilles that would top the starter. However, on the day of the event, the stencils were still trapped in customs, leaving the team with just one stencil that could produce two tuilles at a time. Williams adds: "Thank God I've got such dedicated people working with us. I had three or four people working shifts to make sure they were completed.

"It should have been a lot easier, but as it happened, they were working in shifts for 24 hours. We were setting them in the oven and then removing them from the stencil and returning them to the oven to finish, so we could start the next ones. There was a lot of work getting the timing right. There was some real dedication shown – someone even came back from their holiday to lend a hand."

The main event

Williams described the main course as "very simplistic". His team roasted the fillet from a saddle of lamb, which was served with a lamb jus, an English mint emulsion, Roscoff onion purée and a carrot braised in beurre noisette.

For him the combination of lamb and mint is a nostalgic reflection of British summertime. He says: "It's what I was brought up on, I'm not saying it was a saddle – it was very much a cut of lamb – but I love mint sauce and I love a good jus, it's just keeping it simple."

The chef says the success of the dish lay in it being served at the right temperature, cooked properly and with an amazing jus.

He adds: "Deepak [Mallya] is my main man where sauces are concerned, and he was taking care of that. I was very happy with the jus he produced. It was proper old school, taking the basis of veal and chicken and flavouring it with the lamb trimmings and a few herbs. It's all in how you cook it down to get the right texture, because if you reduce it too much it becomes sticky on your palate and it's not so nice."

An English end

The Ritz London's head pastry chef Lewis Wilson, described by Williams as "very understated but probably one of the most talented [pastry chefs] in the country", devised a dessert based around English strawberries.

Williams says: "The dessert was a long delice vanilla cream with an English strawberry inset, with vanilla cream on top, dipped in a strawberry chocolate and then finished with a vanilla chantilly, fresh strawberries, a strawberry sorbet and strawberry jus. It's English summer."

When the team of chefs were brought on stage to the rapturous applause of the audience at the Cateys, it exemplified the impact Williams has had on shaping a generation of chefs, not just through his work at the Ritz London, and earlier in his career at the Berkeley and Claridge's, but also through his role as executive chairman of the Royal Academy of Culinary Arts. His message to those gathered echoed the sentiments of Raymond Blanc, who had earlier in the evening been awarded the one-off Ruby Catey.

He said: "It's very important to realise that we need to give time to young people to develop. If you give people time they always come through.

"Too many people are jumping into positions they're not ready to do, and if you give them [more] time, they'll become strongerand better cooks. It takes a long time to make a great chef.

"The good thing when you see someone who has had proper training is that they can develop anything from there, it's getting that foundation base, learning how to bake, learning how to make a sauce, how to poach, braise, sauté, roast.

"When you know the techniques you can get to a level where you can mix ingredients and keep tasting to see the effects. Each one of those stages is making you more accomplished, and then you can start developing yourself and doing things that are personal to you."

About John Williams

John Williams, the son of a Tyneside fisherman, was taught to cook by his mother.

In 1974 his career began with a commis chef position at the Percy Arms hotel in Otterburn while he studied for his City and Guilds at South Shields College.

After qualifying as a chef at Westminster College in London, he started work at the Royal Garden hotel in Kensington, working his way through the kitchen until his appointment as chef de cuisine in 1982. In 1984, he accepted the position of chef director at the restaurant Le Crocodile in Kensington before joining the Savoy group of hotels and restaurants in 1986, where he remained for 18 years holding positions such as premier sous chef at Claridge's and maître chef des cuisines at the Berkeley, before he was appointed to head up Claridge's kitchens as maître chefs des cuisines in 1995.

In 2004 he joined the Ritz London as executive chef where he oversees a kitchen brigade of more than 60 chefs and is responsible for the menus in the Ritz restaurant, the Palm Court, the Rivoli Bar, room service and the banqueting and private dining rooms.

Williams is a longstanding member of the Royal Academy of Culinary Arts and was appointed executive chairman in 2004. He has also been awarded a Pierre Taittinger International Award and the Craft Guild of Chefs Award in 2000. He was made an MBE in 2008 .

In 2008, Williams was awarded an MBEin the New Year's Honour List by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to hospitality. In the same year he won the Outstanding Contribution to the Industry Award at the Hotel Cateys, which he followed with the Special Award Catey in 2017.

Selecting the wines, by Nick Zalinski of Matthew Clark

Welcome drink

Silver Reign Brut NV, Charmat of England

From Silverhand estate, this is a delightful English sparkling wine with aromas of elderflower, white hedgerow blossom, apricot and pear. Produced from Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Meunier, it is lively with a refreshing citrus and stone fruit finish.

Starter

Gerard Bertrand Rosé "Gris Blanc" 2022, Occitane, France

Gerard Bertrand is the world's largest producer of certified biodynamic wines. His Gris Blanc is a wondrously pale rosé, crafted from Grenache. It offers up a cool, dry style that is almost creamy in the mouth, finishing with gentle notes of redfruit and minerality.

Main

Piccini Chianti Classico "Poggio Cheto" 2019, Italy

Lamb has many friends when it comes to wine pairings and with John's dish, the poise of this Sangiovese-based red allows the subtle flavours to shine. You'll discover fine tannins and lovely sour cherry combined with sweeter notes of strawberry and fig.

Dessert

Bottega "Il Vino dell' Amore" Moscato Spumante, Italy

John's dessert is elegance personified. Come forward Bottega's Wine of Love: a medium-sweet fizz produced from Moscato with succulent notes of fresh grapes and vanilla, lifted by a fine stream of bubbles and green pear freshness.

The Cateys 2023 brigade

John Williams alumni

• Tom Scade
• Daniel Birn
• Michael Nizzero
• Adam Smith
• Adam Byatt
• Liviu-Cristian Bledea
• Cormac McCreary
• Tom Phillips
• Martyn Nail

The Ritz London team

• Deepak Mallya
• Spencer Metzger
• Lewis Wilson
• Tom Dixon
• Max Burns
• Daniela Prela
• Reece Bosowitz
• Henry Engbers
• Carmen Lopez
• Caitlin Riggs
• Romina Amiri Souri

Grosvenor House team

• Nigel Bischetti
• Adam Neale
• Ian Boxall
• Alex Carroll
• Anthony Hurst
• Said Jabrany
• You Fu Xue
• Paul Buticura