Private Dining at Home

Rather than us tell you, read this extract from editor, Rachel Johnson's two page feature, in The Lady magazine, about chef Paul Collins. She had accepted an invitation for Paul to cook for her.

'I promise you, I knew this was the way forward, dinner-party-wise.  Come the night of the birthday dinner for 12, I had only a list of two things to do 1) I had to show Paul my tragic kitchen, sputtering Aga and batterie de cuisine and 2) I had to show up.

On the evening of the birthday dinner, I went to work and to a book party and did not enter my front door until 8pm.  I went downstairs to show my face and do the 'placement', then upstairs to change.  Paul cooked an astonishing three-course feast of Ivo's favourites - lamb, peas and cheese- having come at lunchtime and cleaned my kitchen, made canapes, and all the bread rolls for the crab starter.  All this domestic martyr-familias had to do was chat, eat, drink .. and write the cheque.  So it really was like going out to dinner in my own home.  And the most perfect way of solving the problem of who was in charge of 'our' entertaining anyone could devise'.

Read The Lady magazine article.   View Pauls testimonials.