series “The Event,” they have captured the cooks
and servers toiling behind the scenes. It started
airing Thursday.
“I do think we tend to take catered food
completely for granted,” says John Watkin, who
with frequent collaborator Eamon Harrington
co-directed the documentary series and served
as executive producers.
From the Screen Actors Guild Awards to HBO’s
premier party for “Westworld,” the four-part
series shows the intense planning and details
that go into high-profile catering.
With complex dishes and makeshift kitchens,
something is bound to go wrong and that’s one
of the lessons home cooks can learn from the
series — flexibility. As one chef notes: “To me,
catering is all about adjusting.”
That was evident last January at the SAG awards
in Los Angeles. Puck’s team had created a dish
for 1,280 that included pan-roasted chicken with
turnip ginger puree and gooseberry salsa verde
alongside miso-glazed salmon with sticky rice
and sesame cucumbers.
Then the chefs got a stunning bombshell from
organizers just days before the vent: The award
show had decided to go vegan.
Puck’s caterers quickly canceled incoming
orders of 250 pounds of salmon and 300
pounds of chicken, pivoting to making
a paella rice dish with kale and squash,
charred baby carrots with a harissa glaze
and a bean salad with arugula, olives and
baby peppers.
Cameras captured the painstaking building of
the dish on plates that stretch for yards, element
Image: Chris Pizzello