Beaumont Estate Conference Center, Windsor. Jesuit Conversion

What do you do with a Jesuit School in Windsor, that seems to be no longer needed: you turn it into a hotel and conference center. Quite an interesting article on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaumont_College . I was only a day delegate, but the accommodation went on for miles, and I think that anyone thinking from the pictures on the web site that they were staying in a historic building may have been a bit disappointed if they were put in one of the distant accommodation blocks.
But what of the food. I was preparing myself for something indifferent, based on a day delegate rate advertised at £29/person, which seems to be below average for the area, but I should not have worried.The fact that coffee at break came out of machines lulled me into a sense of anxiety.
We were directed to a fairly large conference refectory, where a substantial buffet was offered. There was a choice of hot and cold, including vegetarian and fish dishes.

The choice today was tandoori chicken and trimmings, sardines, baked potato, squash with goats cheese or cold meats salad.

I opted for the chicken. 

As a generalization, I am not a great fan of buffet foods, and you know they have been hanging around for some time, and no-one but no-one had figured out that it is a good idea to keep them hot. This was better than average, scoring a 7.2 on the CHOF scale, but the chicken was like a curate's egg equivalent: hot in parts.To call it tandoori chicken was culinary imagination, as it had never been in a tandoori oven, and its acquaintance with tandoori spices had been transient and brief, but they tried: buffet catering for this sort of thing is largely a lowest common denominator affair intended to challenge no-one. Nevertheless, as these things go, it was not to bad at all, but that was as far as it goes.

They had a limited but imaginative cheese board

Not a slice of cheddar in sight, but a mixture of brie, smoked and Danish blue with fruit accompaniment. Choice of bread or biscuits. I thought this was a brave try, as the desert section just had the usual cheese cake.

A functional conference centre with catering, but not memorable..