Food and Beverage

For a corporate party held last year in the Washington area, Magnolia Bluebird Design & Events worked with Occasions Caterers to design several made-to-order food stations, including one that let guests customize champagne cocktails. Garnish options included herbs, fruit, house-made syrups, and flavored sugar cubes.

At the February opening of Washington venue the Powerhouse, Design Cuisine added a D.I.Y. element to the cheese and charcuterie buffet: Guests topped their selections with unique spices displayed in suspended glass bowls or flavored olive oils and vinegars housed in squeeze bottles.

New York’s Great Performances can set up a dessert station featuring hanging pastry bags filled with flavored custards that guests pipe into mini beignets and profiteroles. Custard flavors include tangerine, mint, three-berry, Earl Grey, and vanilla bean.

For an event in April, Scoozi Events NYC designed a “foraged” custom cocktail bar that allowed guests to pick garden-fresh herbs, fruits, and veggies for bartenders to add to their drinks.

Wolfgang Puck Catering offers a ­poutine station that lets guests top individual plates of French fries with beef or vegetarian gravy and mozzarella or cheddar cheese curds, plus a variety of other toppings including brisket, ham, or duck confit.

At the Museum of Science & Industry’s Black Creativity gala in Chicago in January, Sodexo provided a table that held hanging terrariums of flavored salts including red chili, pink Hawaiian, smoke, and rosemary. Also on hand: grinders holding pink, green, white, and black pepper, as well as a variety of flavored butters such as lavender honey and garlic.