What is Devil’s Kitchen, you may ask. Well, it’s an idea conceived by charity fund-raiser Andy Barber, of Hull’s Smile Foundation. It was, no doubt, influenced by the huge, renewed interest in cooking, as seen by the phenomenal success of TV’s Come Dine With Me and Masterchef.
Devil’s Kitchen pitches rival teams from local businesses against each other to provide the best food, presentation, service and experience to invited diners at a local venue. On this occasion, Gosschalks solicitors and Wykeland, the property development company, were crossing cutlery in the big cook-off.
The amateurs from the world of business greet the guests on arrival, prepare and serve the three-course meal, pour the drinks, and generally keep the show on the road and the diners happy. Given the relative lack of expertise on the culinary front, keeping the diners well “oiled” with drinks is clearly a key element of the concept.
And it all works - quite brilliantly! The food served sometimes has only the most tenuous relation to what is described on the mouth-watering menu and the presentation would certainly fail to pass muster on Masterchef, but none of that matters.
My meal was well-cooked, tasty and filling. I cleared my plate and so did others around the table. The presentational issues merely served to fuel the conversation around the table. We all enjoyed our dinner and the discussion about its unconventional features (I don’t recall previously having black pudding as an element of both my starter and main course!).
And we all enjoyed having “the suits” at our beck and call for the evening. More wine, waiter? Yes, sir! I think the bosses at Gosschalks and Wykeland may have found their true vocation!
It’s a cracking Corporate Social Responsibility activity which combines team building and sheer fun for individuals from the companies involved.
Most importantly, the evening raised a tremendous £4,940 for two very worthy Hull causes, the Smile Foundation and the Children’s University. I understand there were 80 diners, so they donated an average of £61, which is fantastic.
And the cost? Negligible. The Holiday Inn very generously provided the venue, facilities and the catering mentors free of charge, while the drinks were kindly covered by the competing businesses. It means that almost all of the proceeds go to the good causes. A brilliant model for maximising charitable benefit.
Andy Barber of the Smile Foundation now wants to take the Devil’s Kitchen concept beyond Hull and the East Riding. It certainly has legs and he deserves success in extending the boundaries of this simple, but brilliantly effective, idea.
But Andy also mentioned he plans to take the concept into schools, under the very clever Little Devils banner. It would retain the element of healthy competition (when was that ever bad for youngsters?), but also emphasise healthy eating, catering skills and teamwork. Yet again, simply brilliant.
Oh, and by the way, Wykeland (featuring friends from the Children’s University) won the Devil’s Kitchen challenge, narrowly outscoring Gosschalks. Of course, the real winners were the good causes these two excellent local businesses served so well.
You can find out more about the Devil’s Kitchen competitors, and the good causes they raised so much for, via the following links:
The amateurs from the world of business greet the guests on arrival, prepare and serve the three-course meal, pour the drinks, and generally keep the show on the road and the diners happy. Given the relative lack of expertise on the culinary front, keeping the diners well “oiled” with drinks is clearly a key element of the concept.
And it all works - quite brilliantly! The food served sometimes has only the most tenuous relation to what is described on the mouth-watering menu and the presentation would certainly fail to pass muster on Masterchef, but none of that matters.
My meal was well-cooked, tasty and filling. I cleared my plate and so did others around the table. The presentational issues merely served to fuel the conversation around the table. We all enjoyed our dinner and the discussion about its unconventional features (I don’t recall previously having black pudding as an element of both my starter and main course!).
And we all enjoyed having “the suits” at our beck and call for the evening. More wine, waiter? Yes, sir! I think the bosses at Gosschalks and Wykeland may have found their true vocation!
It’s a cracking Corporate Social Responsibility activity which combines team building and sheer fun for individuals from the companies involved.
Most importantly, the evening raised a tremendous £4,940 for two very worthy Hull causes, the Smile Foundation and the Children’s University. I understand there were 80 diners, so they donated an average of £61, which is fantastic.
And the cost? Negligible. The Holiday Inn very generously provided the venue, facilities and the catering mentors free of charge, while the drinks were kindly covered by the competing businesses. It means that almost all of the proceeds go to the good causes. A brilliant model for maximising charitable benefit.
Andy Barber of the Smile Foundation now wants to take the Devil’s Kitchen concept beyond Hull and the East Riding. It certainly has legs and he deserves success in extending the boundaries of this simple, but brilliantly effective, idea.
But Andy also mentioned he plans to take the concept into schools, under the very clever Little Devils banner. It would retain the element of healthy competition (when was that ever bad for youngsters?), but also emphasise healthy eating, catering skills and teamwork. Yet again, simply brilliant.
Oh, and by the way, Wykeland (featuring friends from the Children’s University) won the Devil’s Kitchen challenge, narrowly outscoring Gosschalks. Of course, the real winners were the good causes these two excellent local businesses served so well.
You can find out more about the Devil’s Kitchen competitors, and the good causes they raised so much for, via the following links:
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