Kromberg's magnificent seven

For Peter Kromberg, executive chef at London's Hotel Inter-Continental, Monday 13 February was a normal working day. He arrived at about 7am to take charge of the feeding of some 250 delegates attending the 1995 Chef conference and dinner, sponsored by British Meat and Gonzalez Byass and Croft sherries respectively.

Monday was the perfect day for the conference as Le Soufflé restaurant was closed, and he was able to concentrate on preparing food to tempt some of the country's finest palates - a difficult task, as chefs can be notoriously unforgiving when dining out.

For the occasion, Kromberg had some extra help in the kitchen. Besides Tommy Byrne, executive chef at the Inter-Continental, Geneva - who had flown over to speak at the conference and give an Irish flavour to the themed lunch buffet - seven commis chefs from establishments around the country were on hand to help.

The seven had responded favourably to a competition in Caterer that requested young readers to submit an imaginative dinner menu that would appeal to chefs attending the conference. The prize was to spend a day in the hotel's kitchens assisting with dinner preparations.

Kromberg, his banqueting chef Richard Jones and pastry chef James Humphrey, had sifted through a pile of entries before deciding on the winners. When asked how he made the difficult choice, Kromberg replied that one of the main criteria was authenticity. "I went for menus that were original, and that looked as if they had been worked out without too much assistance."

At 11am on the day of the conference, the lucky seven were met by Kromberg in the hotel lobby and led through the darkened Le Soufflé into the bustle of the kitchen.

After a short welcome and introduction, it was straight into the fray of the kitchen. Louise Bradley and Michael Flaherty joined the pastry section where Humphrey was already working towards the evening event, each pastry parcel of Armagnac-perfumed prunes being laboriously assembled and tied with a string of grapefruit peel. Even cutting 260 seven-inch lengths of peel has not put Bradley off her ambitions as a pastry cook.

Mark Russell and Steven Walpole were dispatched to the banqueting kitchen where Jones was already overseeing the completion of the lunch dishes. Gregory Maillet, Tony Gibson and Shaun Bowes worked in the larder section.

At the conference, the successful second half of the morning session - where several women chefs such as Carla Phillips, Frances Atkins, Yolande Stanley and Joyce Molyneaux debated sexism in the kitchen; and Shaun Hill, Michael Caines and Richard Corrigan revealed the ups and downs of their year - had overrun. Delegates broke for lunch just as the finishing touches were being put to the splendid buffet lunch. Delicacies ranged from Galway oysters and Irish smoked salmon to Dublin Bay fish pie, a dark and wonderful beef and Guinness stew, and roast suckling pig.

There were also Irish cheeses with soda bread and ample supplies of the "black stuff". As you might expect at a conference for chefs, at one point the queue at the bar outnumbered the crowd at the buffet.

During the afternoon the seven young competition winners took time out from the kitchen to join delegates in watching a number of demonstrations, which were staged in the ballroom through the tea break. They were particularly impressed by the ice-carving and sushi-making demonstrations.

Kromberg also allowed them to watch the two masterclass cooking demonstrations. Jean-Christophe Novelli cooked paupiette de pigeon sur tatin d'oignon caramelisé au miel d'acaia,and his prize-winning dessert, boîte surprise aux noisettes to wide acclaim.

Gordon Ramsay, whose arrival at the hotel had been delayed by a particularly busy lunchtime service at Aubergine, took the audience through cappuccino of langoustine and lentils, and tortellini of ratatouille sauce gazpacho. Then, after eating something slightly less ambitious in the Inter-Continental's staff canteen, it was back to work for the seven chefs.

The scale of the operation was huge. As Gibson said: "Compared with what I'm doing it is a different world, the kitchen and the brigade are five or six times bigger." Yet the one thing that impressed the seven young guest chefs most was the seamless organisation of the kitchens and the service.

As Maillet commented, while whittling away at a mountain of red peppers in the larder: "It's a really busy kitchen, but extremely quiet. However frantic it gets, nobody shouts."

At one point, just prior to the dinner, a lost guest stumbling into one of the side rooms off the ballroom would have found 260 plates laid out the length of the room with a dedicated teammoving down adding the smoked red capsicum sauce to each perfect triangular slice of Lunesdale duckling and rabbit in a vegetable and herb-scented jelly, then the salad, and finally the salad dressing. All carried out without fuss and without any mistakes.

That set the scene for the service: four courses, all plated, 260 covers. The buzz and controlled excitement was a new experience for most of the young chefs and they finished the evening with a healthy respect for Kromberg and the rest of the Inter-Continental brigade.

As Walpole said, "They all worked for each other and everyone was really pushing on. It is hard to get it right - and then there is the added pressure of having Kromberg looking over your shoulder."

The dinner was well received - as each course emerged, a telling silence spread over the ballroom and diners concentrated exclusively on the matter in hand. At 10pm, Kromberg, Byrne and the seven guest chefs stepped into the limelight for santé des chefs, a glass of Champagne and some well deserved applause.

When asked to sum up the day, comments ranged from "brilliant", to "oh God", and "eye-opening". But one thing is certain, even Gibson, who has faced a good deal of ribbing (the brigade at the County Thistle have taken to calling for "Inter-Continental" whenever they want him), would jump at the chance to do it again.

Finally, as 260 chefs piled out of the ballroom and into taxis - either for the last train home, or for a little extra market research in London's wilder nightspots - the cleaning and reorganising of the ballroom could start.

Later, some time after midnight, Kromberg turned out the light in his small office and set off to his home in Essex after a successful 17-hour stint in the kitchen. A busy day, indeed.