If you have never used a catering service before but intend to book a caterer for an event that you're planning, you may find the advice below to be quite helpful.
Ask the caterer for suggestions if you're struggling to decide what food to include
If you're not particularly imaginative when it comes to preparing meals and you tend to eat the same basic dishes over and over, then you might find it difficult to pick interesting foods for your menu. If this is the case, then you should be upfront about this with the caterer, as they will probably be more than happy to use their expertise to help you 'jazz up' ordinary dishes and make them more interesting.
For example, if you were thinking about serving some type of creamy chicken pasta dish for the main course, the caterer might suggest that you replace the chicken with lobster to give the meal a richer flavour, use an unusual type of pasta shape, such as cavatelli, and add a touch of saffron to the cream sauce to make it taste a bit more complex.
Additionally, they will be able to suggest dishes that will complement one another; this is important, as serving, for example, a starter that is jarringly different to the main course could make the dining experience a bit unpleasant for your guests, even if these dishes are, individually, quite nice.
Lastly, the caterer can help you to select dishes that will help to set the tone of the event. For example, whilst a selection of colourful and fun finger foods, like mini tacos, buffalo wings and crab cakes, might be perfect for a summertime party, they might not be an appropriate choice if you're catering a funeral.
In this situation, your caterer might suggest that you pick some food which is not quite as 'fun' but which is comforting and tasty (like casseroles, sandwiches and soups).
Give them plenty of notice
It is best to book the caterer the moment you confirm the date of the event where the food will be served. There are a few reasons that you should book them as soon as possible.
Firstly, this will ensure that if you decide that one or more of the dishes you originally selected for the menu are unsuitable, your caterer will have time to prepare alternative dishes.
Secondly, giving the caterer plenty of notice will ensure that if there are any ingredients in your selected dishes that are rare or need to be sourced from overseas food companies and that will, therefore, take quite a while to be delivered, the caterer will receive these ingredients in time to use them for the foods they make for your event.
Share18 April 2019
There is nothing better than spending some time in the kitchen preparing a healthy and tasty meal. For many years, I was afraid of cooking. I didn't think that I had the skills to make food so I used to rely on microwave meals. However, all of that changed when I met a wonderful man. He was a chief and he loved food so much that you couldn't spend more than a couple of minutes around him without falling in love with good food. He has taught me lots of cooking skills which have enabled me to embrace the world of food.