Some like it hot, as caterers know

Robert Lamkin

Caterer for movies, TV, commercials and music videos and the occasional private party

Company: Chef Robert Catering

Credits: “The Transformers,” “Because I Said So,” “The Prestige,” “Rent,” “Daddy Day Care”

Job description: “Generally speaking, it is our task to feed anyone who is working in direct relation to the set. That would include the talent, the producers and the crew, all the way down to the security guards. On ‘Transformers,’ they needed the shop owners to stay open downtown on the weekend when they would normally be closed. So they compensated them to keep their shops open and then invited them and their families to have lunch. In that circumstance, without restrictions put on that invitation, you can have 10 or 12 family members show up, and if you times that by 15 shops, you have added 100 people easily.”

Feed and caring: “Our typical obligation would be breakfast followed six hours later by lunch. Let’s take an average movie of 125 people. It would have four or five caterers -- a chef and four assistants. If crew call was 8 a.m., you could have an earlier hair and makeup call at 6 a.m., so you would start at 3 in the morning to get ready to drive to location to start to prepare breakfast for a 6 a.m. ready, and then most of the crew would get their meal toward 8 a.m. and then six hours later would be lunch.”

Scheduling: “It’s our task to keep things as fresh as possible until everyone has eaten. They will break certain departments sporadically. In fact, in situations where light is an issue because of the time of year [as on a recent shoot] ... the crew never broke for lunch, so we provided lunch service at the mobile truck for the people who could get to the truck, and then every two hours we took up a different station right up on set.”

Menu planning: “There are a few of us caterers at the upper echelon because we have demonstrated over the years that we can anticipate the different variables when it comes to diet. For instance, Hugh Jackman came up to one of my chefs on a pilot we [recently] started and said he would be on a special diet. This is out in the middle of nowhere, but we already had everything allowing for [that]. .... You actually go in anticipating everything, which is why you get requested on the bigger projects.”

Requests: “I have actually been on location in another state and an actor’s assistant comes up and says, ‘I need a specialty organic juice from the Napa Valley.’ Then you get on the phone and make arrangements to have that shipped in immediately.”

Daily specials: “A caterer is a nomad of sorts who is asked to, on a moment’s notice, drive across country and start planning in his mind’s eye what the palate might be in that part of the country. If you are going to the South, California cuisine might not work, but by the same token you will have some California crew members there, so you are already formulating how best to address that.

“This actually happened on ‘Transformers.’ Two weeks in advance, I started calling the different food distributors in Alamogordo, N.M. I knew that seafood would be a problem, so I already set up three different shipping options for vendors in Los Angeles to send seafood into El Paso, and I would drive down to El Paso almost daily to pick up fresh fish.”

Kitchen: “We have two big custom trucks. One is a kitchen that is 35 feet long and has as many as four ovens in it. It has its own power source and fresh water. On the support truck there is a walk-in refrigerator. It also takes the tables and chairs and the dry goods.”

Problem solving: “Our task is to think of anything that could go wrong. Like you know you are ending a feature in a certain part of a country only to come back to another part of the country a week later, but that feature goes over three weeks. You go to back-up plans you have already been orchestrating. It might mean poaching a guy from each crew to start driving equipment somewhere in the dead of night.

“I always allow for the fact that [a delivery guy with food] might not get here. What else can I do? In some cases you are going to small markets and buying them out. Or you are using two vendors making duplicate orders.”

Beginnings: “I started cooking in San Francisco with my brother [at a restaurant]. I am the middle of nine children, and my dad was a good cook; my dad, my brother and I would often cook together.

“I knew a friend who worked for a caterer in Los Angeles who had been after me to at least check it out. The next thing I knew, I was flying to Rapid City, S.D., to work on ‘Dances With Wolves.’ I began my own company about eight years later. I loved it because unlike a restaurant where you are locked there and married to it 24 hours a day, I have some of the greatest views as an office. I have been all over the country.”

Resides: Silver Lake

Age: 45

Union or guild: “Because we are driving a piece of equipment, all the chefs are Teamsters. We are a special Teamster class -- cook-driver or chef-driver.”

-- Susan King