William Leece talks to the man who has brought a new trophy to Everton FC

GARETH BILLINGTON can’t resist a mischievous dig at Everton Football Club.

As head chef at Goodison Park, he takes great pride that the club’s catering has won the Directors’ Choice Award for the Premiership in the annual Football Hospitality Awards.

And that, he says with a hint of a grin, is one more award than the team has won on the pitch this season.

Quite what David Moyes and his staff think of this little bit of one-upmanship is not recorded, but the fact remains that Everton is top of the catering league right now.

And with 30 chefs and 30 more kitchen porters producing up to 2,000 meals on a match day, it is most definitely a team game – but one spread over days, rather than just 90 minutes.

Kick-off is on Wednesday for a Saturday game.

“That’s when we get the deliveries,” says Gareth. “We start preparing the veg on a Thursday, we peel the carrots by hand, make the potato dishes, soups, sauces, and the like.”

The level of catering depends on exactly which lounge or restaurant within Goodison – from the de luxe boardroom and Dixie Dean suite downwards – but the aim is to provide what the client wants, which can be anything up to 360 fillet steaks cooked to order.

It’s a big task, but Gareth has an impressive CV behind him. Like many in the business, he started in his teens helping out at local hotels in his native Nantwich.

“At 13, I started washing up at a local hotel. They got a bit short of chefs one night, and they got me cooking. I decided it’s the sort of career I wanted.”

He studied for a while at a local catering college, then borrowed £25 from his father to see what work he could find in London simply by knocking on doors.

He was offered a job as a junior chef – a commis chef – working under the highly-respected Steve Latimer, at the Garrick gentleman’s club, in London’s West End. Two years later, he was with the QE2 for a two-year stint of 17-hour days, followed by work in hotels and clubs in the Caribbean and at home, before arriving as head chef at Goodison with Sodexo, the company responsible for Everton hospitality, about two years ago.

There is a lot more to the operation, though, than simply providing refreshments and hospitality at Everton.

The club puts a big emphasis on training, and at any one time there are likely to be three or four youngsters on work experience, often from the nearby Alsop High School, or the Hugh Baird College, in Bootle.

“If they like the catering industry, we usually take them on a part-time basis,” says Gareth.