Canapés steal the show

As London Fashion Week kicked off on Friday, it wasn't just the designers putting the finishing touches to their collections.

An army of caterers, drafted in to provide perfect bite-sized morsels for the fashion crowd to nibble at, were busily finessing their menus.

In recent years, at least, the business of making canapés has been elevated to an art form - each small mouthful is a chance for the chef to exhibit limitless culinary trickery. It has, it seems, all come a long way since the dark old days cheese and pineapple on a stick.

"It's amazing to think that 10 years ago people didn't really know what a canapé was," says Victoria Blashford-Snell, caterer and author of three canapé recipe books.

"We've been through many incarnations in a very short space of time. First, they got a bit a too clever and ironic; then they became incredibly over-fussy and complicated.

Now I think we've come to realise the best are the ones that are fresh, clean and honest, that look brilliant and in one bite taste absolutely stupendous."

One catering company that had its work cut out for it at Fashion Week was Nomad Food and Design, which, tellingly, was set up by a fashion photographer-turned-restaurateur, Martin Phillippe.

Nomad opened in Paris in 1999 and it wasn't long before its ability to create canapés that reflected the various aesthetic demands of a brand had lured in many of the big names, including Dior, Louis Vuitton, Yves Saint-Laurent, Hermes and Chanel. Business became so brisk a second kitchen, headed by chef Tomasz Adamowicz, opened in London in 2005.

"One of the key things that Martin set out to do was to create something that was very different to the bog-standard French catering company," says Nomad's events director, Michael Namock.

"It may sound quite hard to believe but when it comes to outside catering, Britain is way ahead of France. In France it's all very traditional and French. Martin set out to create a company that could create food to match any brief."

This willingness to experiment has, in large part, been the secret of its success.

There is no such thing as a typical menu at Nomad, and recently it has done everything from sushi to fillets of beef and quails' eggs. Nomad was also one of the first companies to introduce radical molecular gastronomy techniques into the art of canapé-making.

"We recently did a party to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the French jewellery company, Boucheron, where we used an espuma technique to create various foams such as pineapple and lychee, as well as a white peach and fromage blanc," said Namock.

"Each foam was created in front of the guest by a chef using a gas-powered siphon and was served in tiny, polished silver bowls with an equally tiny metal spoon."

The Nomad take on a classic lemon meringue pie, meanwhile, involves plunging a cube of lemon filling into smoking liquid nitrogen at a temperature of minus 180 degrees, then plunging it into a container of meringue.

"When it comes out its texture completely changes," says Namock, "so when you bite into it you get a lovely crunch, a hit of lemon, and meringue that melts on your tongue."

Lyndy Redding is something of an old hand when it comes to making canapés. She started her company, Absolute Taste, 13 years ago and does most of Gordon Ramsay's launches and celebrity parties.

She believes Britain is now producing the best canapés in the world, with Australia possibly a distant second. "Caterers in London have taken it to a new level," she says.

"We are way, way ahead of what they are doing in the States and Europe; some of the stuff you see them serving there makes me cringe."

Another canapé company that was set for a busy fashion week was Urban Caprice - the catering arm of Caprice Holdings, which owns The Ivy, Le Caprice and others.

This week it will be providing canapés for 450 guests at Russian supermodel Natalya Vodianova's Love Ball charity gala at London's Roundhouse. After much deliberation, offerings are to include flaked Dorset crab and finger lime and samphire, and marinated Romney farm beetroot and feta and pistachios.

Namock thinks things can only get better: "In recent years, a number of young companies have come forward doing really innovative, quirky stuff, which has really rattled some of the older, more established companies who have had it too easy for too long. We are young, we are innovative and we are very, very hungry."

- INDEPENDENT