Party provider: London's haute caterer Justin Horne on collaborating with Fiona Leahy and the big canapé trend for next season

He’s the A-list’s first choice for posh party food. But Justin Horne doesn’t come cheap
The haute caterer: Justin Horne with his team at Bumpkin, Notting Hill
Dipal Acharya18 June 2015

Don’t get Justin Horne started on mini burgers. London’s swankiest caterer, who has provided party food for the likes of Mick Jagger and Claudia Schiffer, cannot stand them: ‘A massive cliché, along with baby fish and chips. It’s all so 1990.’

If you were to book his chic Shepherd’s Bush- based company All the King’s Men, he’d be more likely to serve sous vide duck eggs with artichoke velouté or a crème brûlée topped with spherified Amaretto balls. Do we detect a hint of Heston Blumenthal in his menus? That’s because Horne, 35, trained at Dinner at the Mandarin Oriental, having cut his teeth at The Ivy. He got into private events two years ago, fed up with ‘working 100 hours a week’.

For the supper he cooked for Sir Mick and 40 close pals at the rocker’s Chelsea home, he served ‘lamb drizzled with a chocolate ganache followed by sea bream in a smoking saffron broth’ with coffee-poached pears for dessert. When a wealthy Chinese client in Notting Hill requested a tasting menu for two, Horne dished up Wagyu beef, foie gras, caviar, truffles, king crab legs and ‘a really rare Japanese tuna’. The bill came in at £12,000.

Indulgent: a gold-leaf jacket potato

He doesn’t come cheap, but that’s sort of the point. ‘I’m not going to temper my quality of service because you don’t have the budget,’ he says. His fashion clients include Moda Operandi, Nicole Farhi and Matthew Williamson, and he frequently collaborates with party-planner to the stars Fiona Leahy (Louis Vuitton and Dior have her on speed dial).

This summer Horne is leaving his home in Kensal Rise, which he shares with his 11-year-old son Maximillian, to go on a fact-finding mission to Ibiza: ‘Ferran Adrià is opening a restaurant there next month.’ As for the big canapé trend for next season, it’s gold. ‘As in gold-leaf jacket potatoes, sprayed-gold hot dogs, the works,’ he says. What about gold-flecked mini burgers? ‘Not a chance in hell.’

Latest London food trends

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All the King’s Men (atkm.co.uk)

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