Heston Blumenthal moves into event catering with Rhubarb

The deal will see Blumenthal and his development chefs work with Rhubarb, official caterers for the S.Pellegrino World's 50 Best Restaurants Awards for the past two years, to improve the technical and creative aspects of its food, creating 'Heston-style' dishes for current and future projects.

Blumenthal, who has so far focused on building up his business in restaurants and pubs, said the partnership offered a new 'creative opportunity' for him and his team.

He said: "Restaurants, by nature, have limitations and I have wanted to work with a company like Rhubarb for some time. The more we talked and discussed ideas and opportunities, the more obvious the synergy became between us. There are some fantastic avenues to explore and an enormous amount of fun ahead of us”.

Synergy

Clive Beharrell, chairman of Rhubarb, said the company had been taking inspiration from chefs across the globe for some time, but it kept returning to Blumenthal as a preferred partner because it believed his expertise would bring 'an exciting new dimension and flavour' to the events sector.

"His creative and unique approach has complete synergy with our own identity and we are delighted to finally be working together," he said.

"We are looking forward to the next chapter of Rhubarb's development in collaboration with him and together creating new menus and ideas on food presentation.“

Rhubarb, set up in 1999 by Lucy Gemmell, has grown significantly over the last five years. It has fixed contracts with The Royal Albert Hall and The Saatchi Gallery while catering at a number of one-off high profile events. It runs a restaurant at Heathrow's Terminal Three and one called Bond and Brook at the Fenwick store on Bond Street.