He is the man who masterminds the feast that is consumed at Royal Ascot – Steve Golding. He may be Royal Ascot executive chef but he cooks with the rest of them every day. Hilary Scott met the king of the kitchens.

This article was going to be headlined ‘Food fit for a queen’ but when I actually get down to the nitty gritty with Royal Ascot executive chef Steve Golding, he’s quite honest.

“She eats at Windsor before she arrives,” says Sodexo-employed Steve as we view the Royal Box from the back entrance in the new Ascot stand.

“And though we provide afternoon tea  sandwiches, scones, clotted cream, jam and tea – I’m not sure she touches it.”

Steve, 40, does explain though that he does cater for the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire and the rest of the Royal party, which pretty much includes them all – and they do eat his food, lots of it.

Everyone at Ascot eats food overseen by Steve in some way. For he’s in charge of the catering for 274 other private boxes, 40,000 hospitality meals and the myriad of public restaurant outlets plus the RAC Racing Club – an exclusive club where it’s hard to even find out if you’d ever qualify to be a member.

There’s the Parade Ring restaurant, the Windsor Forest, the Panoramic, the Trackside, the Bessborough, the Carriage, the Royal Enclosure Lodge, the pavilions… the list is almost endless.

It’s a mammoth task and the day I visited the racecourse the central production kitchen was having a deep-clean to prepare for this year’s meeting.

Steve seems unfazed – he’s calm, cool and collected, as you’d need to be.

This is not your average mass catering – the racegoers at Royal Ascot are a discerning lot. From the sheiks of the Middle East to the Irish establishment, the ladies who lunch around Ascot and Virginia Water to the British racing elite, they’re used to multiple Michelin-starred fare. Not for them a salmon salad with new potatoes followed by a bowl of strawberries and cream.

And now the world of fine food has gone local, they expect that if their favourite eatery’s serving up local dishes, then their racecourse should too.

So a big part of Steve’s job is sourcing that local food.

Again he’s honest: “If I were to choose a strawberry supplier form Berkshire I’d wipe out their whole crop and more – not good for their business.”

So he balances localness with supply. “I do get strawberries and raspberries from Berkshire but mix them with supplies from Hampshire and other countries.

“The strawberry crops starts in Cornwall and migrates its way up the country in terms of taste so that’s how I work that out.”

Berkshire also supplies fresh herbs – tons of them – quail and lamb. Hampshire supplies watercress and the crayfish.

Crabs are Cornish and the sea bass is line caught off the Sussex coast.

And Steve uses the ingredients inventively – dressed Cornish crab with bloody Mary ice cream; double rib lamb cutlet, summer beans chanterelle and rosemary flowers; wild strawberry and pink Champagne terrine with strawberry and Dorset clotted cream ice cream.

Says Steve: “I think this year’s range of menus is exciting – we've got Tomato Tuiles served with celery salt candy floss, a quail’s egg ravioli, flavoured candy floss and strawberry and black peppers popping candy truffles.

“We’ve taken ingredients you would never think of putting together and combined them to produce dishes we know you’ll remember.”

Not bad for a lad who got into catering because his father was a head chef and then decided that hospitality was his forte. He came to Ascot 11 years ago from the Inn on the Park in Park Lane and has loved every minute of it all – from the meticulous planning starting in October for Royal Ascot to the raft of client-specific requests (mainly from the Arabs).

“It’s all about planning,” says Steve. “And we never forget that a lot of people are paying serious money for their outing.”

So with all this to oversee, Steve surely doesn’t go near a stove during Royal Ascot week unless it’s to supervise? “No,” he says. “I cook every day and I'm in every kitchen every day – even though it can take me four hours to get round. And I spend as much time in the public kitchens as I do the others – the food for the general race-going public is just as important. There are around 310,000 visitors to Royal Ascot and we don’t want one complaint.

“But I’m lucky in that I have a core group of around 60 chefs I really trust and we get the rest of the catering staff from trusted agencies.”

And while it all sounds pretty exhausting what I’ve omitted to tell you is that under Sodexo Steve is also executive chef for another four racecourses – Sandhurst, Epsom, Haydock and Aintree – and is involved in the catering for two football clubs.

It must be a career with a short shelf life you’d think – but Steve has been doing it for 11 years and sees himself doing many more.

When he decides he’s cooked his last, his aim is to open his own restaurant.

“I’d love to have a seafood place in Windsor,” he smiles. And if he does, it’s a sure bet he’ll still be feeding members of our Royal Family.

* For details on hospitality, to book an event, go racing or plan an exhibition please call 0870 727 4321. Royal Ascot takes place Tuesday, June 17, to  Saturday, June 21.

Consumed in 2007

Racegoers at Royal Ascot 2007 ate and drank:

•  40,000 balls of St Clements Sorbet
•  18,000 portions of foie gras
•  3,000 kg of lobster
•  8,000 crabs
•  5,000 oysters
•  4 tons of smoked salmon
•  20,000 sticks of asparagus
•  18,000 punnets of strawberries
•  4 tons of beef fillet
•  11,000 scallops
•  1,000 kg of clotted cream
•  20,000 scones per day
•  75,000 rounds of afternoon tea sandwiches
•  180,000 bottles of champers
•  170,000 bottles of beer
•  15,000 bottles of wine
•  15,000 bottles of Pimms