For a healthy catering option for meetings, Wolfgang Puck Catering offers a variety of energizing snack options with brain-boosting foods such as almonds, walnuts, and flax seeds. Options include a build-your-own oatmeal bar.
With guests wanting to know how their food is made, the in-house catering team at the Drake Hotel in Toronto believes experiential catering stations will take off next year. Examples include its pasta station, which allows guests to watch as chefs take pasta as a raw semolina mix, extrude it through a pasta machine to form a noodle, cook the noodle, and mix it in a cheese bowl before serving.
Af&Co., a restaurant and hospitality consulting firm that represents eateries and catering companies in various U.S. cities, also included high-energy, experiential stations in its 2018 trends report. Salt Lake City-based catering and event planning company Culinary Crafts offers a fresh-pulled mozzarella station. Â
Geraldine's at Hotel Van Zandt, a Kimpton Hotel, in Austin serves a snow cone that consists of a white chocolate cone with strawberry granita and peppercorn meringue.
Chicago-based Fig Catering noted that the taco trend isn't going anywhere—but expect more unique fillings, rather than standard Mexican fare. Taco fusions could include Korean kalbi, fried Italian peppers, Mediterranean lamb and harissa, and Japanese uni seaweed.Â
Pretzel and doughnut walls have become familiar at events, but the wall concept itself is a trend that will continue, according to Toronto-based catering company Eatertainment. The company offers an ombré macaron peg wall, offering vanilla, rose, cotton candy, grapefruit cayenne, and Peruvian chocolate flavors.
Bread & Butter Public Relations, which represents eateries and hotel restaurants throughout the U.S., noted that a dessert trend will involve nostalgic desserts aimed at kids, which are given an upgrade for adults. Hotel Colonnade in Coral Gables, Florida, serves a nitro dessert station that offers boozy ice cream made with liquid nitrogen. Flavors such as Grand Marnier, dark rum, Godiva Chocolate Liquor, and Chambord are served with a variety of ice cream social-style toppings.
