Opting to add seafood catering on your menu can help make your event look more extravagant. Not only are the dishes visually appetizing, the main stars of this type of food offering — both the fish and the shellfish — also offer hefty health benefits. However, you have to be careful with a lot of things if you want to ensure that your attendees will enjoy your seafood meals. This article discusses seven tips to help you out.
Offer something else for those who have seafood allergies. In case you still don’t know it yet, many people suffer from food allergies — especially seafood ones. So to accommodate attendees that might have them, it’s safer to include other non-seafood meals in your menu. Consider adding a chicken or pork dish of a vegetable-heavy meal for variety.
Determine your attendees’ choice of dish early on to help control costs. Speaking of offering variety, one of the downsides of this strategy is incurring unnecessary expenses by serving too much of the menu items. To address this concern, you can determine your attendees’ choice of dish early on by including menu-related questions in your RSVP. This will help you have a good estimate of how much you should prepare per main dish.
Tap a caterer that specializes in seafood catering. Serving seafood dishes requires meticulousness. From buying the main ingredients to cooking them properly, your caterer should have expertise in doing each phase of the seafood catering process. Hence, it will be vital to choose a catering provider who has had several experiences crafting a seafood-leaning menu.
Ensure that the seafood ingredients are fresh. The secret to serving delicious seafood meals is obtaining and using fresh ingredients. Your caterer should be knowledgeable when it comes to choosing the fish and other seafood items they will use — as well as in storing them properly and safely.
Know and follow the two-hour rule. Though delectable and packed with health benefits, seafood meals are relatively quicker to perish compared with other meals. As a general rule of thumb, perishable foods that have been out at room temperature should be thrown away if they have not been consumed within two hours. If the venue has a hotter temperature (e.g. 90°F), perishable meals should be tossed out after around one hour.
Check if your venue can accommodate your catering needs. Like what you should know by now, seafood catering is indeed an intricate and delicate task. And to effectively pull off serving such a menu, your venue should be able to accommodate the needs of your catering provider — including having ample storage space to having proximal electrical outlets.
Print out your menu and label your dishes accordingly. As stated above, you should offer variety even if seafood dishes are the main stars of your menu. This will not only help cut down expenses but also cater to those who have allergies. And to help your attendees distinguish which is which, it is advisable to label your dishes accordingly. This will be of great help to people who may not be visually familiar with the dish you are offering.
If you are craving an excellent spread of seafood, our team at Saint Germain Catering can solve that for you. Whether for a corporate event or private gathering, we can provide seafood catering to make your important gathering extra special.
