No matter what your event is for, it can be stressful attempting to cater for hundreds of people yourself, especially if they have special dietary requirements. Often to avoid the stress and hassle people tend to hire private events catering Aylesbury. But even if you do decide to use a catering company, how should you know which catering type you should use? We’ve provided some of the best catering ideas!
What Are The Best Catering Ideas?
Although you can choose almost any catering services for your event, sometimes there are more catering services suited to your event than others. Take into consideration how many people are going to be attending your event, is it a large corporate business meeting? Or is it a private family get together, or even a small wedding reception? All of these factors contribute to the type of event catering that you should choose for your event.
If you’re hiring multiple vendors, the amount of guests you have should not be too much of an issue. If you have a few vendors around the place supplying all different kinds of delicious dishes, guests will love the fact that they have a choice, and it will prevent queues piling up around one stressed vendor. However, if you’re only hosting a small event, then one catering company should be enough. Although we would still say, even if your holding an event for a small number of guests, the pressure of preparing, cooking and serving up food can still be humungous, especially if the event is your own wedding day!
So if you are holding an end of years event, or holding one just in time for the new year, be sure to keep reading! As we have devised a list of some of the most unique and best catering ideas for your next event!
Do It Yourself Noodle Bar
How often have you been sat in on a Sunday night craving the taste of a Chinese, chicken noodles and sweet and sour chicken! Why not give your guests the treat of a Chinese exactly how they want it with a do it yourself noodle bar! The thing with event catering is ensuring that there is something that all of your guests will like.
Giving them a choice and offering them different foods will make them happy and show that you’ve taken the time and effort to ensure that there is something for everyone. Noodles suit the majority of dietary requirements, but most catering companies will offer alternatives if you let them know beforehand. Vegetable noodles offer delicious, healthy dishes for vegetarians, while traditional noodle dishes also cater for those who do eat meat, as well as seafood noodles for those who would prefer this. Be sure to ask beforehand about kosher or halal meats and let your vendor know.
BBQ Food
BBQ food seems to be an old favourite for catering in regards to those holding an event. It seems although summer has now passed and the Winter weather has set in, people refuse to let go of barbecue season and the delicious food that comes along with it.
The best thing about smoked meats is that they are so delicious, the herbs and spices combined with a delightful marinade is left on the meat for hours, giving it such a rich flavour that people love. Wood smoked meats are authentic and give you the delicious flavours of barbecued food all year round. As a catering business ourselves, we spend hours preparing and marinating our meats to ensure that they are overly flavoursome and not just your typical barbecue food. The Rub specialises in street food and puts their own signature rub on everything, a modern-day twist to barbecue food.
A lot of people enjoy our catering services Oxford due to the amount of selection we have that allows our menu to suit everyone. The main dishes on our menu include smoked halloumi burgers, chicken thighs and pulled chicken burgers, pulled pork burgers, ribs, hot dogs, and as part of our festive menu even pulled turkey! These are the things that make us different from other street food vendors, we supply dishes for everyone’s tastes and supply all varieties of wood-smoked meats. Most people that use our kind of event catering are holding large events, or even street food events.
DIY Crepe Stall
The best thing about a DIY crepe stall is that it not only gives your guests options of their own toppings, but it also satisfies those with a sweet tooth, as well as those fancying savoury food. Simmons Creperie creates fresh crepes right in front of your eyes, before they serve it up and give you a choice of as many toppings as you wish.
Crepe stalls are fun, and they are often cost-effective. If you’re hosting an event like a wedding or birthday celebration, we can guarantee that a sweet crepe is going to be a huge hit with the kids (and the adults!).
Gin Bar
Although this isn’t food, we couldn’t help but include the gin bar on our list of the best catering ideas. Recently gin has increased in popularity, and since this, there have been hundreds of new crazy flavours being invented and brought out for gin lovers to try.
Often at corporate events, it’s nice for employees to be able to have a friendly drink with other employees. Although it’s very uncommon for somebody to get extremely drunk, having a drink is a nice way to socialise and can bring your employees together, if you all have a common interest in Gin, the gin bar is perfect! It’s also suited for weddings where alcohol is widely consumed, once again most people enjoy a drink when they’re celebrating, why not give your friends and family something new to try with the unique flavours available at a mobile gin bar?
Mobile Milkshake Bar
Milkshakes that can be made with your favourite chocolate, biscuit or sweets make the best event treat. As well as this, for more adult based events, some milkshake companies will even incorporate sweet liqueurs such as Baileys into an alcohol-based milkshake!
A lot of people enjoy milkshakes as they can make people nostalgic and are generally a sweet filling treat. The best thing about mobile milkshake bars is that it once again gives your guests the choice of creating their own milkshake recipe. In a sense, it’s almost exciting, as you don’t know what your milkshake is going to taste like until you try! Your friends and family can have fun creating different milkshake recipes.
Afternoon Tea
For those looking for more of a sophisticated approach when choosing your event catering, afternoon tea should suit you down to the ground. Although you aren’t presented with mountains of food, everything involved in afternoon tea is small and dainty, but absolutely delicious.
Mini finger sandwiches, macaroons, scones and mini cakes are all the kinds of things that you will find yourself presented with at afternoon tea. Although only small, you are presented with so many different things that it gives you the chance to sit and widen your taste pallets rather than sticking to one meal. As well as this the food when consumed can be filling as it’s mostly pastry, bread and crackers. Afternoon tea is good for those who wish to sit down and have a catch-up, like your typical sit-down meal it gives you the opportunity to gossip with small nibbles rather than devouring a sizeable hot meal. It’s often used at wedding and is a tidier, more sophisticated version of a finger buffet.
Hog Roast
If you aren’t a massive fan of eating meat, then a hog roast might not be for you. Otherwise, a hog roast could be perfect for your event! We must warn that a hog roast is not for the faint-hearted, it does involve a full sized pig being roasted and it does still have the head on, so if you are squeamish or do not like things like this, we would recommend you to avoid this.
Hog roasts are absolutely delicious, and they are great as they can cater for a big group of people. Often they’re used at weddings as these are typically where there are a large number of guests. Although they can be hired for corporate as well as private events. Another great thing about hog roasts is that they can be eaten in a variety of ways, wraps, burgers, baguettes and it can even be eaten as a sat down meal with potatoes and veg.
Liquid Nitrogen Ice Cream Bar
Satisfy your sweet tooth with another of these sweet catering ideas. Liquid Nitrogen bars allow workers to create ice cream within minutes right before your eyes. This is great as you know that you are being provided with food that uses fresh ingredients.
Liquid Nitrogen bars such as Whipsmiths have been providing high-quality, delicious ice cream for a number of years now. In this time they have been creating, trying and testing different flavours and ingredients together to create some of the most delicious flavours. They have created their own menu of their tried, tested and approved combinations that they love, but as well as this they present guests with a menu of ingredients and give them a choice to mix and 3 ingredients together to make an ice cream flavour or sorbet.
The best thing about liquid nitrogen bars is that they add a unique twist to your event and make it slightly more exciting as ice cream created like this right in front of your eyes isn’t very frequent.
Doughnut Stall
Who doesn’t love doughnuts, although we don’t mean you typical jam or custard filled doughnuts, we mean delicious one of a kind doughnuts made from some of your favourite treats. Planet doughnut have their own shop, and they offer external catering services for all kinds of events. Choose from their huge menu boasting every doughnut flavour under the sun, ranging from lemon, to peanut butter, cookie dough and even toffee apple!
Supplying these at your next event could make your event a huge success, people love trying new things, so if you provide your guests with a vast menu of one of a kind doughnuts they will be amazed! Alternatively, you can hire things like doughnut walls, buy your own doughnuts and put them all on there, that way your guests can just go up and pick the doughnuts that they want.
Choose Your Event Catering Today
Now that you know the wide range of catering services that are available, it’s time to choose the best kind of event catering for your event. Be sure to ask your guests whether there are any dietary requests that they have or any other needs to ensure that everyone’s needs are met.
For more information on our catering services or our special occasions catering Northampton, please feel free to contact us today. We hope that this article was helpful, if it was then why not share on social media?