It has been a whirlwind 12 months for English entrepreneur Selina Waterman-Smith, following her appearance in series 11 of reality-TV contest The Apprentice on British television last year.
She finished in seventh place, and subsequently found herself dodging paparazzi and avoiding muckraking journalists. After such an experience, you might think the 33-year-old, who moved to Dubai in 2008, would have had enough of her home country.
Quite the opposite. Her latest business venture, Smith’s Catering in Jumeirah Lakes Towers, firmly focuses on her favourite type of food: hearty British dishes made to her own family’s recipes.
“Smith’s is a quintessentially British food-delivery and catering brand,” she says. “It’s styled around home-cooked, authentic, classic British recipes. Everything is freshly made on site each morning – the bread is freshly baked; the chicken and the steak are all roasted that morning.
“The emphasis is on high-quality ingredients and taste. We don’t use any hormones, chemicals or preservatives. All of our meat is farm-traceable and organic where possible.
“I think that classic British homemade food is some of the most amazing cuisine on the planet – and it bothers me how there’s such poor representations of it in this region.
“I was born and raised in Somerset [in the south-west of England], so a lot of the influences in my cooking are inspired by that. I was brought up in the countryside and we grew all our own vegetables and fruit in the garden as a family. We never had to go to the supermarkets for things. I’ve tried to replicate that in my cooking for Smith’s.”
This week marks the official launch of the walk-in, sit-down offshoot of Smith’s, which is part of Kitchen Nation, a “culinary incubator” that offers eight to 10 new food brands a chance to share space on its expansive menu.
“The idea is that you can use this facility and share their resources to start up your business,” says Waterman-Smith. “As your business grows, eventually you’ll move away from Kitchen Nation.”
Smith’s dishes do a great job of putting a contemporary twist on British staples, such as the roast beef and Yorkshire pudding wrap served with onion-and-herb gravy and horseradish sauce, plus a range of “posh spuds”.
Traditionalists can find solace in straightforward classics, including chip butties. Other notable options include the chicken, leek and mushroom mini puff pie, and the Rochester rhubarb and apple crumble.
The self-funded Smith’s is Waterman-Smith’s third business in the UAE, alongside events and entertainment agency Dark Horse and costume production and manufacturing venture Urban Blonde Designs.
During her time on The Apprentice, she clashed with fellow contestants and says she was portrayed by producers as the "pantomime villain". But she views her time on the programme, which ended when she was fired in Week 9, as a positive experience overall.
“It was much less about business than I had imagined,” she says. “They have to show people in a thoroughly one-dimensional light, so they’ll pick on one personality trait. I found that quite difficult to deal with.
“But I was very proud to represent businesswomen in the Middle East on such a high-profile programme, particularly because there’s a lot of misconceptions [in Britain] about the Middle East and about how women are treated here.
"I've always wanted to do catering and I had this concept a while ago. The very first task on The Apprentice was a catering task – I was the project manager and we won that task. I think that really kick-started it for me."
Her newfound celebrity status brought with it a few downsides, however.
“Nobody warned us that it was suddenly going to be scary and very invasive, that you were going to get paparazzi-ed, that journalists were going to follow you and secretly record you without you knowing,” she says.
“It was quite disturbing. Nothing could have prepared me for being thrust into the spotlight like that.”
aworkman@thenational.ae
