Food Entertaining Trends for 2012-And What You Should Know About Them

To help you plan your gathering this year, here is our roundup of the top food entertaining trends for 2012--and what you should know about them. 

The tasting craze continues
The tasting party craze continues in 2012.  An assortment of small amounts of foods in small-ish, often specialized, tasting serving pieces or dishes is set out for guests.

What you should know: Hot food doesn't do as well at tasting parties as the so-called tasting serving pieces do not offer anything designed to keep food hot.  Someone recently suggested that hot bites be brought out midway through an event, but unless you offer the hot bites to people off trays, they won't rush to leave whomever their socializing with to eat the hot food while it's hot, so what's the point? 

A solution may be a hybrid cocktail/tasting party, with the hot food in a chafer (and there are some very mod chafers and chafer options out there now) and the other food in tasting dishes or serving pieces. 

You should also know that if you want to have a tasting party for a lot of people, you will need to use a LOT of little tasting dishes--do you have room?

Wine bar food continues to be popular
In a similar vein to the tasting craze, wine bar food continues to be popular for entertaining, more popular than dinner parties.  Gatherings with wine bar food are easier to pull off than a tasting party as you can serve wine bar food on larger trays and not just the little tasting dishes.  They can also be easier than a dinner party as they tend to be more casual.

What you should know: Be prepared to put out less of a variety of wine bar foods but of the best quality, especially if your guests have traveled and know wine bars, enotecas, tascas, tabernas, salumerias, etc., etc., from different places and have that to compare you with. 

The best thing is to choose only three or max four different dishes and use the best ingredients.  Up the wow factor and green it by using local artisan cheeses, local cold cuts, local produce, local breads, and local wines, mixing one or two hot wine bar dishes with a really good salumeria/charcuterie spread to make it easy on you.

The exotic bites trend continues
People continue to hunt for ever more exotic food--exotic to the U.S.--for, especially, cocktail parties, fundraisers, and weddings.

What you should know: More often than hosts think, this type of food just doesn't taste good, though it may be beautiful.  Suggestion: take the presentation or concept from an exotic bite and adapt it to foods that do taste good and that more people will like and eat. 

For example, we recently added to our menus our Executive Chef's take on Shrimp-, Crab-, and Octopus-Stuffed Avocado with Cilantro-Caper Mayo, changing it to Sherried Gulf Shrimp-Stuffed Avocado "Pears" with Cilantro-Caper Mayo, which we serve by alternating the avocado "pears" with Three-Cheese "Pears" on a serving tray and decorating the "pears" with fresh herb "leaves." 

Interactive food continues to be popular
The trend of interactive food, from make-your-own-skewers to cooking class parties, continues to be popular in 2012.  This type of entertaining is now used for everything from bridal and baby showers to business events. 

What you should know: These types of gatherings, except cooking classes, appeal mostly to younger people, so if you're planning a mixed-age event this year, you may want to keep that in mind and offer alternatives (such as one or two hors d'oeuvres that you don't need to put together yourself or someone to prepare plates for those who don't care for interactive food).

Enjoy.

Kristina

Fandango Catering and Events
(713) 522-0077
www.fandango-catering.com