Once you have agreed to have a buffet you may think the difficult decisions have been made, but there are still a few buffet dilemmas you might face.
Here are three common wedding buffet dilemmas:
Dilemma 1: Finger Food Platters or fork buffet?
The names of these two distinct buffet types are fairly self explanatory. A finger food selection served on Platters, consists of food that can be picked up and eaten with the fingers, and a fork buffet includes food that needs to be eaten using cutlery.
A finger food Selection is the less formal of the two, and guests can choose whether to eat whilst standing up and mingling or whether to find a table and sit down. With a finger food selection, guests tend to graze over a period of a couple of hours. This makes the finger food selection an alternative for evening receptions.
A fork buffet usually includes hot dishes with sauces and a selection of vegetables and side dishes. Guests usually help themselves from the buffet and then return to their places at the table to eat. This makes a fork buffet more suitable for during the a day or evening wedding as the timing is neater and easier to fit around speeches and cake cutting. Guest usually only fill their plates once or twice, and the period during which they are eating is much shorter.
Dilemma 2: Self service buffet or staffed buffet?
Assuming you have chosen a fork buffet for your wedding dinner, you now have the choice of letting guests help themselves, or having a staffed buffet. A staffed buffet is an advantage as guests still have to take their plate up to the buffet table, but their food is dished up for them, resulting a neater fairer distribution of food. Guests can also ask questions of the staff or Chef as to the ingredients in certain dishes, for their personal dietary needs or concerns especially allergies.
A staffed buffet is more formal than a self service buffet, it gives you a degree of control over portion sizes, and it helps to prevent guests knocking food over or spilling it on themselves as they serve it. However, a staffed buffet will not work out more expensive than a self service buffet as the wages to be paid are about the same, at least not with us. seewww.thespitroastcompany.com.au
Dilemma 3: Hot or cold buffet?
Once you have decided to have a buffet for your wedding dinner, you will need to decide whether you want to just serve cold food or whether there should be some warm dishes in there as well.
Whether you have a hot or cold buffet does depend largely on the season you have chosen for your wedding. You could certainly get away with a cold buffet during the summer months, but if you are getting married in early spring, winter, or late autumn, you should try to include a couple of hot morsels. Some guests may feel they haven’t had a proper meal if they don’t get something hot. With our Menus, Hot & Cold choices can be chosen for on the same buffet, to keep all your guests happy.
A cold buffet has no more advantage over a hot buffet except that it can be served anytime so you have more flexibility over the schedule of your wedding day. If parts of the buffet need to be cooked or heated up, you will be selecting a more precise eating time and will need to be ready to eat as soon as the buffet is laid out. But you still choose the dinner service time for Hot or Cold Buffets as food safety is of consideration, as food (hot or cold) cannot be left out for extensive periods of time without temperature control.
Our Hot Dinner Buffets are kept hot in Bain Maries lidded, then unveiled upon commencement of the buffet, with canned heat underneath which enables us to serve food hot, right to the end, but if served in winter, cold plates will cool the food down quickly. It will depend on the venue or venue kitchen if plates can be heated in Winter months.
The key with a hot finger buffet is to be sure the foods you choose taste good hot or cold, never the less, we cook hot finger food fresh on site and serve immediately, to avoid serving finger food gone cold. see our Finger Food selection of most of our Menus.
Hot Finger food selection we offer freshly cooked hot, platter by platter
- Mini Dim Sim
- Flame Grilled Meatballs
- Vegetarian Samosas
- Golden Spring Rolls
- Hot Spicy Banditos Wedges w Sour Cream
- Golden Thai Prawn Purses
- Crumbed Chicken pieces
- Crumbed Calamari
