How To Conduct A Food Tasting - Hippo Event Management Agency

When we depart an event, what’s one of the key things we remember about it? Hopefully, your first response is the event content and people you met, but very close behind will be the food and beverage.

How many times have you come back to the office and gone “great event, but the food was rubbish!”, or sometimes even worse, “there wasn’t enough food!”. Food is memorable. It emits emotion, and thus you remember it. Food plays a crucial role in your guests’ enjoyment. I bet you can remember exactly when and where you were when you had a memorable food experience. Yes? Remembering how good you felt and the flavours you tasted? Exactly, it’s memorable.

Food can make or break an event. Presentation of the food is just as important as flavour and taste so it’s vital to experience it beforehand. This is why we’re sharing our top tips for a successful food tasting.

1. If working with external caterers, receive multiple quotes, and ask them to quote on the same requirements.

2. When working with your agency, get them involved. Remember, it’s their job to make sure you receive the service and food you want, and to ensure what you tasted is what you receive.

3. Book your tasting well in advance of the event. It gives you time to get it right, think about it and reflect on it afterwards.

4. Request that the table be set up as it would be at the event. This’ll give you a visual of what it would look like and you can make changes as necessary. Include table centres if you’re ordering them too.

5. Bring a colleague (or two). Ideally, if one of them is a vegetarian then this helps further. Having different sets of taste buds will provide alternative points of view.

6. Ensure you’re tasting a minimum of three dishes per course. Variety means choice.

7. Try and make the dishes different for each course i.e. don’t try a chocolate tart, chocolate fondant and a orange and chocolate cheesecake for desserts. Consider a Fruit Tart, chocolate fondant and a lemon cheesecake for dessert. This’ll give you a variety of colours, textures and ingredients to choose your favourite from.

8. You don’t have to make your final choice during the food tasting. It’s best to make it afterwards, especially once you have tasted each course and can then look at the meal as an overview. Look at the whole meal as one.

9. By making your final choice after the food tasting, you can also consider the colours of each course. Make them all different. You don’t want a brown starter (e.g. caramel onion tart) followed by a Roast chicken dinner (with brown gravy) followed by a chocolate dessert.

10. Similar to the above, consider the textures when making your final decisions. Try not to have the same textures in every course.

11. Remember, you can ask for a dish to be varied. What you try does not have to be the final dish – if you like the vegetables from one dish but the meat from another, ask if you can mix and match.

12. Don’t forget to look at how the food is presented. Does it look appealing? People eat with their eyes first!

13. Ask your caterer to provide a cross section of differently priced wines so that you can sample them together with the food.

14. Keep a score sheet, giving a score on presentation and taste. You won’t remember everything when you leave, so jot it down. You could even tally it up at the end to decide the ‘winner’ of each course.

15. Take pictures so you remember each option and have a reference point for the future, especially if you are asking for changes to the original dish.

16. On the service front, observe the caterers to see if they are changing dishes, cutlery and glassware expediently during the tasting – this is a great way to judge their level of service and communication.

17. Ask about upgrades – what is available? Table decorations, linen, wines, glassware etc. See them at the tasting if you can.

18. And finally, ask about levels of staffing on the day of your party – you do not want a delicious meal served slowly.

There you have it – 18 tips for your next food tasting. Who ever said a food tasting was simple? With so much to consider I hope you found this Blog useful.

Hippo Events are an Event Management agency, specialising in a wide variety of events – from Product Launches right through to Team Building events. We offer free Global Venue Finding and End to End Event Project Management, including help with your food tastings!!