Food, glorious food!

We attended our caterer's annual bridal open house today. It's their main tasting event for this year's brides, where they served the most popular/well received dishes on the menu. With the weather a perfect, sunny 70 degrees, it was great timing for this event.


Upon entrance, there was an assortment of welcome beverages available: iced tea, guava passion fruit, icy jamaica, fresh squeezed lemonade, and berry spritzer. This would also be available to guests during cocktail hour at our reception.


Local florist, Kaleidoscope Flowers, provided the arrangements. I was in love with every arrangement I saw :)


Tall arrangements adorned the food tables. They provided me with great ideas for our reception.


Smaller arrangements were on guest tables. I love their use of coral into the flowers and orchids are so pretty.


Appetizers were passed around. It was a bit difficult to taste everything because they were being snapped up by guests rather quickly. We did enjoy the ocean fresh ceviche in crisp tortilla cups. It's perfect for a seaside affair.


They also had macaroni with gruyere. Totally delicious. Other appetizers included: cocktail hamburgers, grilled garlic beef with cilantro pesto, white cheddar cheese quesedillas with brie, and filo pear & gorgonzola triangles.


The "Honey, I shrank the Chicken Entree Station" had my favorite design. Mini portions of lemon caper chicken, chicken roulade, and braized chicken provencal were placed on trays of rocks heated by tealights.


There was a chef manned pasta station that offered gnocchi, garden marinara, parmesana alfredo, fresh spinach, and the most delicious portobello mushroom raviolis. We were undecided on pasta as a side, but this may have convinced us to go for it.


The carving station was a popular stop for everyone. Tri tip and tenderloin filet were served on bite sized bread with a variety of dipping sauces. My favorite sauce was the mango salsa. We really like this idea for our reception. Guests can choose their meat portion size and favorite sauce.


Another food we would like at the reception would be a fish dish. The seafood station provided grilled salmon with uva rosso sauce, sundried tomato crusted salmon, and parchment enveloped pistachio crusted tilapia. Salmon is my favorite fish, so we are leaning towards that. Fish is also lighter than beef, giving our guests a nice option.


To close the day, dessert was available to take home. It was another popular station and something to consider for the end of the reception.


I love the take out boxes for the desserts :)

All in all the day was a success. While we didn't get a chance to taste everything on the menu, we got a very good idea of their catering style and narrowed down our wedding menu selections. We met local vendors (florist, muscians, rentals, photobooth) to consider working with and local couples. We even saw Jeff Lewis, of Bravo's Flipping Out, and his team enjoying themselves.

I like the idea of an open house for the experience it provides. The open house showed us professionalism, the staff's enjoyment in their jobs, the quality of food, and their event management skills. With this event running smoothly, we can be confident of the same at our reception. So we are happy that not only does our caterer cater, they are a full service event specialist :)

We are also convinced about having a photobooth at the wedding :)

How has your catering and tasting experience gone? Did you attend a huge catering event or do private tastings?

Blog title is from a song in the musical Oliver