Food is not only a form of nourishment for the body, but over the years has also become part of culture and trends. Finger food in particular, has been a most popular food choice for parties and events in recent years. Finger food is food that is meant to be eaten directly, using hands without any additional cutlery. It is usually bite sized and guests can just pick it up and consume it in one mouthful. Finger foods are particularly suitable for gatherings, in which you would want to provide refreshments to your guest but do not want the food to overwhelm the event.
Canapés or hors d’oeuvres are the most common selections of finger food you would find at cocktail parties or networking events. These are small and decorative food consisting of a small piece of bread, puff pastry or a cracker accompanied with some savory toppings that are easy to consume and would enable guests to mingle and walk around while enjoying the food.
Go Cater being a premier caterer, is constantly keep abreast of the latest trends in catering and has in its extensive menu, a wide selection of finger food options. Understanding the popularity of finger food for events of late, Go Cater has developed and crafted many interesting and delicious finger foods for your events.
So how do you know what finger foods are appropriate for your event?
Finger foods come in salty, sweet, light, rich, hot, cold and any flavor combination you can imagine. For starters, you will want a well-balanced selection that offers all-encompassing elements of the above mentioned. From here, there are also a whole host of considerations that will need to be taken into account when selecting the right finger food menu for your events.
One of the key criteria’s in enabling you to make the right selection is to know your event and your guests. For a fancy cocktail event, you would want a more sophisticated selection that would live up to the atmosphere of the event. Go Cater has a wide selection of canapé and finger foods such as the Tuna Mayo Crostini, Ebiko Tuna Cucumber, Vanilla Profiterole and many more that would surely not be out of place for your classy cocktail event.
In a networking event for example, you would want the finger food to be bite sized and fuss free as the focus of guests would be much more on mingling and establishing contacts with one another. Go Cater’s mini sandwich selections; mini samosa and spring rolls would be most apt for the occasion. Location and the time of day of the event is also another consideration when selecting your finger food menu. Is the event a midday brunch, and afternoon tea or a formal evening cocktail? The day and time of the event will help you to select cold versus hot foods, savory or sweet leaning selections and so on.
For a daytime event such as product launches for example, you can offer bite-size tea sandwiches, puffs, tarts – all of which are available from Go Cater’s extensive finger food menu.
For an evening event, you can opt to serve some hot and some cold finger foods, such as cheese tarts, cup spaghetti, vegetable quiche, cocktail sausages and the like. These are the mainstays of Go Cater’s extensive menu, which are highly popular with our clients.
Another thing to keep in mind when selecting finger foods is to not get carried away by wanting to serve everything under the sun. Especially when the event is an important upscale cocktail for example, you will be tempted to serve as many choices as you can, thinking that the large variety will impress your guests even more. In crafting a finger food menu, sometimes less is more. Give guests options, but not overwhelm them by having everything on the table, keep the selections to a similar taste profile to the rest of the offerings. This will tell guests that your event has been carefully thought out and well planned.
Balance is also a key factor when you want to impress guests with the finger foods offered for their enjoyment. A complete and rounded selection should preferably consist of meat, seafood and vegetables, sweet and savory foods, which would potentially cater to the palates of your guests that could consist of a wide variety of diets. Our Mushroom on Water Cracker Canape and Mini Chocolate Éclair should satisfy even the most discerning palates.
Having said all that however, in selecting the right finger food menu, variety is still an important underlying factor in ensuring the enjoyment of refreshments for guests at any event. It is therefore important to be open to ideas and experiment with variety within reasonable means. A variety of flavors, colors, textures and shapes would offer both a visual and tasty impression of the foods served at your event.
Ideally in selecting a finger food menu, you would want at least some soft food and some crunchy food. Food on skewers should not be too many as it might be cumbersome to navigate especially if guests are expecting to pick up the food and put it straight into their mouths. Several non-bread foods are also prudent as too much carbs (bread) might make guests feel too full.
Serve foods or garnishes with color, such as prawns, mustard dip and pesto. This will visually wow your guests even before taking a single bite.
Provide foods with a variety of shapes and sizes: – round sliders, square mini pizzas, breadsticks, triangular canapés, etc.
In summary, when making a selection of finger foods for your events, keep in mind these key factors and your finger food menu would undoubtedly be the talk of your event. Theoretically, serving finger food might seem like an easy task. However if the menu is not carefully planned and thought out, it would most certainly spell disaster for your event. It is with this in mind, Go Cater with our extensive experience and expertise in the catering industry, are definitively your partner of choice in providing you consultation and a vast array of selections to choose from for your finger foods!