Food

[lsanderson]

Affairs of the Art World
By MAURA EGAN

When Margot Henderson and Melanie Arnold were scouting for a place to hold a dinner for the artist Anselm Kiefer after his opening at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in Paris last fall, they found the perfect spot: a metal factory. For the two women, who run Arnold & Henderson catering in East London, it wasn’t just the factory’s location, which is near the gallery in the city’s Marais district; it was the rawness of the industrial space — a complement to their no-frills cuisine as well as the artist’s rugged aesthetic. The 240 guests, including the French prime minister, sat down at long banquet tables while the cooks worked out of a makeshift kitchen. Dishes were served family-style from large bowls and platters; the entrée, veal shin on the bone, arrived with a knife sticking out of it. The “chichi Parisians” had to carve it themselves. “They went mad for it,” Arnold recalls. And so did the artist. Since then, Arnold & Henderson has gone on to produce other dinners for Kiefer in London, the most recent in a Soho parking garage. More