It would have been easy to build another catering company. London has many good ones, our own parent firm among them. What we wanted to build instead was something narrower and, we hope, better for it.
City Canapé Company rests on a simple conviction, that doing one thing well is worth more than doing many things adequately. By focusing entirely on the canapé, we can give it the attention it is so often denied. Every item on our menu has been developed, tasted and refined on its own terms, rather than adapted from a larger set menu. This is the whole of our craft, not a corner of it.
That focus extends to how we cook. We use good ingredients, prepared by hand in our Clerkenwell kitchen, and we resist the shortcuts that scale so often invites. A canapé is small, and a small thing done carelessly is obvious at a glance. We would far rather it be small and done properly.
It extends, too, to how we deliver. Our canapés travel across Central London by cargo bike, chilled and ready to serve. This is partly a practical matter, as a bike moves through the city more reliably than a van, but it is also a deliberate one. A business that cares about the detail of its food ought to care about the mark it leaves, and quiet, clean delivery is part of the same standard.
Underneath all of this is hospitality, which is the oldest idea in our trade and still the truest. Whilst we take the food seriously, the point of it was never the food alone. It is the gathering the food makes possible, the room made a little warmer, the guest made to feel looked after. If our canapés play a small part in that, then we have done what we set out to do.
That is the thinking behind City Canapé Company. We are glad you are here to share it.