Meet Sabel
Your event should be extra-special.
Sabel exists because we believe the food and drink at your event should be as impressive, delicious, and beautiful as the food you enjoy when you visit an excellent restaurant.
Lianna Jewell
Director, Sabel Food
Why Sabel?
Sabel is Toby’s mum’s maiden name. It’s the anglicised version of his great great grandparents’ name, Sablinski; Jewish immigrants who lived in Mile End in the 1890s.
Their Story
When they met, Toby was head chef of a busy local bistro, having worked his way up from waiter, and Lianna ran events.
Toby started working at the types of restaurants he was trying to impress Lianna with; places with stars and long hours. She waited up for him to finish so they could eat together late at night.
Toby took a job running the kitchen at a large boutique catering company, where he learned how to make his excellent food, but now for much larger groups of people and from temporary kitchens in the back of national galleries or on the side of Formula 1 tracks across the world.
They realised their work worlds had become compatible, and so they enlisted siblings and dear friends to help them with their first “Sabel” venture, a pop up restaurant in an old pie and mash shop, getting great reviews, long waiting lists and happy customers.
In 2015 they registered Sabel Food LTD, in 2016, their marriage, and then their twins’ births a few months later. Sabel’s first catering gig was their own wedding.
Sabel ran as a one-man-band for a while during the baby stage, helped by a wonderful team of workers we are proud to still be surrounded with today. Toby catered his first events, working with headline chefs to deliver food for long table banquets at festivals, and Lianna joined him back at the kitchen table when the children joined school.
The business thrived until covid, when they rapidly developed an online shop and delivery service. Later on they set up a successful production catering service for TV shoots until they could move back into delivering real food and drink to real people in real life again.
Since then, it has been year after year of pinch-me projects, varied and fantastic work from wonderful clients, supportive venue partners, and a full, loud house, talking about, eating and making food together.
This year, Sabel reaches the serious age of ten, and Toby and Lianna look forward to their next chapter with love, excitement and a lot more cooking.
More about Toby
Toby started Sabel 10 years ago, with a desire to design and deliver his own personal menus and style to the event sector.
He is in charge of the operational, strategic and creative leadership of the company. He writes menus with an understanding of cooking built up from years in a range of Michelin and local restaurants and catering, and his focus is always on tasty food that is deliverable in the setting.
And Lianna
Lianna heads up the sales, events, customer satisfaction and finances of the business, after 15 years of producing events for large international companies. She runs local group Hackney Twins Club, and is a member of her children’s school PTA.
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