Queen’s favorites served southern style

What does it take to impress the owner of a place where, for Laura Bush’s 60th birthday luncheon, the first lady of the United States asked permission to take a doggie bag home to the president?

It takes the queen of England.

Self-taught chef Patrick O’Connell opened the Inn at Little Washington in the foothills of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains almost 30 years ago, insisting on using local, all-natural foods at a time when they were in short supply. Since then, it has become the oldest Mobil five-star award-winning restaurant and one of only three double-five-star properties (for the inn) in the country. O’Connell has received dozens of culinary accolades.

So when Tim Kaine invited him to the governor’s mansion in Richmond last Thursday to prepare the food for a private cocktail reception in honor of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, it was not as the designated caterer; it was as a true representative of the finest the Commonwealth of Virginia has to offer. The event was among dozens in the queen’s honor during her visit to the United States, including an elaborate, white-tie state dinner at the White House on Monday.

“It’s just not the kind of thing you imagine will ever come your way,” O’Connell said.

The reception for 50 was “in many ways the same feeling a home cook has who’s having 50 people over,” he said. “You still worry how it’s all going to come together.”

The rarefied circumstances of the event – the guest list also included all the living governors of Virginia and their families – made it more complex than an ordinary off-property reception. “The guests were to arrive at 2 p.m.; the queen at 3:30. At 3:45, she’d be gone,” Rachel Hayden, O’Connell’s marketing manager, said early last week. “Everything was completely orchestrated and choreographed so she could meet everyone and eat in only 15 minutes.”

“That meant I had to captivate her in an instant,” O’Connell said. “Everyone likes to taste something exotic when they are out of their environment, no matter how sumptuously they live.”

The time of day proved challenging. “It had to be a light lunch, hors d’oeuvres, tea and early cocktails, all at the same time,” O’Connell said. “So I thought of the sequence of the offerings in the context of a meal: delicate to heavy, savory to sweet, with a transition of refreshing sorbets in between.”

The strategy apparently worked.

“Our mixture of queenly things and stick-to-the-ribs upgrades of familiar dishes satisfied everyone’s needs,” O’Connell reported Thursday night on his way to Los Angeles.

Did the queen eat? “Of course,” O’Connell said, but added that there was no word on just what she tried and what she thought of it.

When it came to her preferences, though, O’Connell had left nothing to chance. He consulted Michel Roux, a chef favored by the royal family, about likes (eggs, seafood) and dislikes (raw fish, garlic, strawberries). The Monday before the event, O’Connell staged a three-hour dress rehearsal at his restaurant. He and his cooks prepared all of the dishes and served them to one another.

One by one, each dish was adjusted until all passed muster: tasting spoons of roasted beet mousse, Virginia country ham with mango, baby rock shrimp with guacamole, cucumber sorbet and Maine lobster with grapefruit butter sauce; lacy Parmesan wafers standing between polished stones; delicate cups of sorrel jelly with osetra caviar and rhubarb, blueberry and vanilla panna cotta parfaits; cornets of smoked salmon poked into a loaf of bread to resemble the quills of a porcupine; tempura squash blossoms with Asian dipping sauce; tiny crocks of chocolate creme brulee.

Artful refinement is O’Connell’s hallmark, but at its heart his food is down-home; he keeps the interests of everyday cooks in mind when he develops dishes.

“What could be more basic than biscuits with ham? Or scrambled eggs?” he said. “They can be made an hour ahead of time, held in a pastry bag until service, and then piped into eggshells to make an elegant first course dish for home cooks,” he insisted. “I want people to be inspired to try these recipes.”

And why not? Those eggs were a big hit, O’Connell said, even if the queen didn’t ask for a doggie bag.