cafe chameleon - innovative festival caterers
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Your festival is different.
So you don’t want “one-size fits all” catering
café chameleon will take into account your festival ethos, your target audience, budgets, your ideas, tastes, and what your other caterers are providing.
Then Clare and Frank (café chameleon’s owners) will personally work with you to agree exciting, nutritious, ethical, good-value menus especially for your event.
Ethics, responsibility and sustainability
You will be pleased to know that:
We prefer to source our ingredients locally or from
fair-trade producers
We always use free-range eggs, poultry and meat
We are happy to use organic produce
Although this means we aren’t always the cheapest, we’re sure you, your customers, crew and artists agree that paying a little extra to avoid cruelty to animals and a huge carbon footprint is worth it. We also believe that this stance makes our food taste even better and helps us sleep at night! And we promise our prices won’t include an arbitrary premium for ethical food with “designer labels”!
A World of Choice
Home-made tasty casseroles, paella, small or big breakfasts, yummy filled (and filling!) baked potatoes, authentic pasta dishes (Clare and Frank are part-Italian!) traditional British, Oriental, Indian, Mexican, African, French, vegetarian, fish, steaks, amazing salads, pancakes, fresh fruit, desserts…
Too hard to choose? No problem, just talk to us about an eclectic menu with a variety of styles and tastes.
OK, let’s get this one out of the way: Yes, we can serve burgers! But you won’t find nasty, greasy, tasteless rounds of shoe leather slapped into a soggy bun! If you want us to serve burgers, your revellers will love our rump steak burgers with a variety of toppings and a salad bar.
Quality, Hygiene and Passion
As you’ll see from our About Us page, Clare and Frank are experienced and qualified caterers. We aren’t ashamed to say that we also have a passion for superior food. Whether it’s haute cuisine or a hot dog, we believe you should demand the quality we seek
As well as a bunch of professional diplomas, you’ll be reassured to know we are also registered with the Food Standards Agency and NCASS, and have close links with the Soil Association who certify organic produce
Staff are trained and certificated in food hygiene, monitored constantly, and re-trained regularly.
Apart from bits of paper and our passion for good food, you’ll discover that we have deep-rooted principles of quality, cleanliness and hygiene that is self-evident. We welcome on-the-spot inspections from Environmental Health Officers, and you are welcome to come and check “behind the scenes” anytime you like, unannounced. See us use temperature probes and other measures to ensure your customers’, crew or artists’ meals are memorable for the right reasons!
Contact us now - we’d love to talk to you, send you more details or arrange a meeting.
Artists and Crew Catering
Catering for your hungry crew and demanding artists requires understanding, the ability to stick to budgets, innovative thinking, flexibility to adapt to changing circumstances, professionalism and, of course, great food when it's needed!
Put simply, you tell us how much you want to spend to look after your all-important people, how many to feed and when to feed them, any special requirements, and we'll propose menus and service to suit.
If you need us to, we can provide a suitably-sized marquee, tables, chairs and even generators all at low cost. Or we're happy to set up in your own facilities, using your power supply and your furniture. Either way, we'll bring the kitchen!
Although we'll work to fit in with you, we've found that a good way to control costs for you is to provide you with meal vouchers to distribute. The idea is that, for example, if you have hired a crew member for two full days, you might give them two each of breakfast, lunch and dinner vouchers. Then they 'pay' us with for their meals with the vouchers, which we mark as used. Accounting is simple - you pay us for each used voucher we present to you.
Due to the commitment, effort and cost we make to prepare for your festival, we will ask you for a reasonable up-front deposit.
What happens if a crew member or artist wants to entertain their own guests? Simple, each meal can also have a cash price displayed, so, unless you decide to provide their guests with vouchers, they can buy a meal in the usual way, and they can all eat together.
By the way, we can also provide hot and cold drinks all day (and all night!) if needed, and late night food for your security crew.
Please see our sample menus, but don't worry if you don't see what you like - we can start from scratch and devise menus to fit your wishes.
Sample Crew and Artist Menus
Breakfast
Croissant, pain au chocolat or pastry, preserves, cereal, fruit or yoghurt
or
Breakfast in a bun: Bap with up to 3 items from: Egg, bacon, beans, tomatoes, mushrooms.
or
Traditional British Kedgeree
Fruit juice, tea or coffee
Lunch
Choice of jacket potato, roll or wrap with fillings from the salad bar
Example salad bar: Coleslaw, potato salad, Greek salad, leaf salad, tomato and spring onion vinaigrette, carrot and coriander in dressing, tzatsiki, Waldorf salad, bean salad, tuna and sweetcorn, ham, cheeses, cold meats, houmous, cottage cheese.
Dinner
Chilli Con Carne with Arroz Blanco
Pork, Dill and Mustard Ragout with Baked Jacket Potato
Sweet and Sour Chicken with Five-Spice Noodles
Lamb Rogan Josh with Bombay Potatoes
Tuna, Zucchini and Sweetcorn Casserole
Old English Sausages with Onion Gravy and Cheese and Spring Onion Mash
Penne Carbonara with Rocket and Lollo Rosso Salad
Hungarian Goulash with Crusty Bread
Traditional Beef Stew with Herb Dumplings
Moroccan Lamb Tagine with Lemon and Coriander Couscous
Coq Au Vin with Fennel New Potatoes
Sustainable Whitby Salmon, Dill and Lemon Fishcakes with Dill Sauce and Coriander Mash
Nasi Goreng (Indonesian Chicken and Prawn Fried Rice) with Spring Onion and Lemon Salad
Pork, Apple and Seasonal Vegetables cooked in Cider with Buttered Baby Potatoes
Beef, Charred Leek and Wine Risotto
Pollock Baked in Foil with Herbs and Vegetables, served with Potato and Carrot Mash
¼lb Beef Burgers with Choice of Toppings in White Or Wholemeal Baps with Salad Bar
Vegetarian
Mixed Mushroom Stroganoff
Brown Lentil Chilli
Chick Pea Curry with rice
Golden Vegetable Casserole with Sage Dumplings
Vegetable Jambalaya
Cous Cous with Spicy Baked Aubergine & Chickpea Stew
Malaysian curry mee with coriander noodles
Mushroom and Bean Ragout
Pasta with Garlic, Walnut & Rocket Sauce
Peasant's Pot
Vegetable Korma with Pilau Rice
Baked Red Mexican Enchiladas
Penne Napolitana
Vegetable Paella
Salad bar – see above
Desserts
Seasonal Fruit
Pastries
Ice Cream
Assortment of Yogurts
Fruit Cake with Vanilla Custard
About Us
Clare King
Clare has long experience of feeding demanding mouths, including running one of the country’s first vegetarian nurseries, innovating an accredited farmer’s market cafe, to several years of masterminding the Green Man Cafe at events such as WOMAD, Two Thousand Trees, The Big Green Gathering, Tewkesbury Medieval Festival, Nailstock, Berkeley Castle Joust (for five years running!), The Rainbow Festival and many more!
In her time of providing quality, responsibly-sourced food in a range of locations, she has learnt to adapt, and didn’t even let two feet of flood water at one event dampen her enthusiasm, energy and professionalism.
Clare has also been instrumental in ensuring that our staff are trained to the highest standards of food hygiene, our organisation adheres to the “Safer Food, Better Business” system of the Food Standards Agency, and that we qualify for membership of recognised trade bodies such as NCASS.
Clare says, “We should give people a good experience, including a memorable ambience. I get a real buzz out of seeing people enjoy our food. I strongly believe in working with festival organisers. It’s no good being one-sided and inflexible, if we’re both happy then we, you and our customers win.”
Frank Gilbert
Frank has been cooking since he was a small boy, and in his time, has served food to stars from Tommy Cooper to the Rolling Stones!
He qualified as a professional caterer and hotel manager in his teens, and by the age of 20, was managing a large restaurant at the end of North Pier, Blackpool!
Since then, he has worked for Grand Metropolitan Hotels, Cunard, Trusthouse Forte and as a partner in an early ‘Hard Rock’ style restaurant.
Later, he specialised in helping hotel and catering businesses to provide what their customers want. And he still believes this is the key to success.
He is also a music enthusiast, was a DJ for many years, and is learning to play bass guitar!
Frank and Clare are a solid team whose skills and experience dovetail to ensure high quality, professional, exciting food with a conscience for your festival.
Contact Us
Sorry, but due to the activities of spammers, we are having to be a bit crafty about how we show our contact email address. Just remove every other character from this: CcLlAaRrEe@@CcAaFfEeCcHhAaMmEeLlEeOoNn..CcOo..UuKk. It should read "clare" then the at sign, then the name of our business without a space between the first and second word, then .co.uk. Thanks for making the effort!
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