Festive culinary confessions
‘Tis the season to be jolly — busy!
The festive season needs planning, and lots of it. The more you want to ‘wow’, the more minute details you will have to deal with, from selecting a colour scheme for the baubles to deciding how much icing sugar is needed for snow. Without careful planning, you could end up with eggnog on your face.
Hotels will try to build a reputation over the years for their seasonal festivities, which must be maintained — or bettered — each year.
One such hotel was the first I worked in, which at the time was the only casino complex in Australia.
The budgets for Christmas and New Year were astronomical — all 1600 seats in the Grand Ballroom were sold out every year for 21 years in a row.
The engineering department would erect 700 real pine trees sprayed with fake snow around the perimeter of the ballroom, while the ceiling was rigged with thousands of fairy lights which were then covered with satin cloth, to look like the night sky with twinkling stars. Turn the AC on low and you had a magical forest wonderland.
Across the whole complex there would be 2700 people sitting down to eat Christmas lunch at the same time in nine different places. Can you guess what was the most difficult thing to arrange? Not the food, or the vast amount of equipment — it was getting nine Santas into their respective areas without being seen by any children. Try explaining to a child why they have just seen three Santas chatting!
Who plays Santa is important to an establishment’s reputation and its kiddie street cred; the more convincing he looks and acts, the happier the junior customers will be — which will in turn result in happier parents.
When I was in London, our security manager was a Santa to remember: he was 6’8” tall giant with a booming Welsh baritone and when suited and booted in his costume (made by the Royal Shakespeare Company) he stood over seven feet tall.
Can you imagine the looks on all the children’s faces when they saw Santa having to bend down to get through the door? Brilliant.
I myself have played Santa many times; I don’t know why when someone says the words ‘who is going to be Santa this year?’ everyone looks at me and smiles.
It must be because I am good with kids.
The festive season is the time for office parties, school leavers parties, bizarrely-themed parties — you name it, it all happens from the first week of December until the start of January.
It is the time of the year when kitchen, F&B and banqueting departments kick into overdrive, feeding thousands of ‘merry’ guests whose only mission is to dent the booze allowance.
But it is also a chance for us to show off our culinary and interior decorating skills. I have built huge gingerbread houses and life-size chocolate Christmas trees — partly to show off but also because it’s fun to see people’s reactions when they see these creations.
Once Christmas is over then the real work starts for the biggest party of the year: New Year’s Eve.
Organising the costumes, the decorations, the food and the drinks takes so much careful planning and strategising that it’s a bit like preparing for war — menu planning in October, tasting in November then ordering everything the first week of December to ensure you don’t miss out. It is hard work, but ultimately very rewarding.
So when do hoteliers get to celebrate? Well, last year I woke up my then 21-month old son, his mum and nana at 5am to open presents, as I had to be at work by 7am. Cruel, I know.
As for the hotel staff, our Christmas parties normally happen in January — but what happens at those is censored.
Ho ho ho and bah humbug,
Marcus Gregs
Marcus Gregs is the executive chef at the Mövenpick Bur Dubai. He has 16 years’ experience working in hotel kitchens in cities such as London, Sydney, Amsterdam and Dubai.