So If Not Buffet Service, What Else Is There?

So I spoke with literally dozens of brides-to-be and mothers of brides-to-be at the 2005 Seattle Wedding Show who felt that buffet lines are a terrible way to treat one's guests. Most had buffet horror stories to tell - the Dauphine Potatoes ran out and had to be refilled a quarter of the way into the guest count; somebody's aunt sneezed right over the Baron of Beef carving station; the line of hungry guests extended out of the dining hall, into the foyer and then out into the street.

I feel your pain, really I do. But let me review a couple of the good points of buffet service before we dispense with it altogether:

• a much smaller staff is required than for any other style of service; literally a fraction of the labor cost
• it is actually a pretty social way to handle food service; standing in line is an icebreaker, even if it is annoying
• guests choose not only what foods they want but how much they want as well
• the hot food is hot and the cold food is cold when your guests plate up

So if not buffet service, what else is there?

In most people's wedding reception experience, the alternative to buffet service is fully-plated service. The food is loaded onto plates by the kitchen staff and then distributed by the dining room staff. There are advantages here, too, obviously or else people wouldn't keep suggesting it:

• Portions are strictly controlled, so there's not as much wasted food
• Plates can be "composed" - arranged in decorative, even artful ways
• The elderly, the disabled and the very young don't have to stand in long, slow-moving lines
• it keeps people at their tables so that they don't themselves get entangled in the more complex parts of the evening's events
• an organized, usually more rapid way to get people into the dinner hour
  

But there are a few downsides to fully-plated service:

• the staffing requirements go up exponentially. You not only need more staff on the service side, but you need a lot more staff in the kitchen to plate the food up as quickly as possible
• the food doesn't stay as hot in the delivery process as it does with any other style of service
• your guests don't get to choose what they'd like to eat or how much they'd like to eat
• while buffet service might be annoying, fully-plated service isn't any better than emotionally neutral

So - what are the alternatives to buffet service and fully-plated service? In fact, there are a couple.

The one I would urge hosts of dinner parties to consider first is family-style service. In this case, our staff brings and leaves large dishes of food to the table and the guests pass them. Think "Chinese Restaurant" service or "Buca di Beppo"... something like that. Advantages:

• requires less kitchen staff than fully-plated service
• food arrives hot and stays hotter in service dishes
• food arrives quickly without the hassle of long buffet lines
• all the guests are involved in a more communal, intimate dining experience

Disadvantages:

• requires a lot more service staff than buffet service (although not more than fully-plated service)
• a lot more dishes to rent and service pieces are a bit more expensive to rent than plates and flatware
• a little more difficult to pull off for large groups because rental companies frankly don't carry large quantities of service pieces. It can be done, though... and we have done it.
  

The other alternative is called service a la russe. Most of us haven't traveled in the kinds of rarefied circles where service a la russe is common, so I'll explain it. From the first edition of the Larousse Gastronomique: "In service a la russe the guests at a party are divided up into groups of 10 or 12 people, varying according to the total number, each group being served by one waiter." The waiter brings service dishes, each with enough food for all his guests and, depending upon the formality of the event, either the guests serve themselves from these dishes or the waiter serves them. This is more than a few steps up in terms of luxury from the other kinds of service I mention. This too has some obvious advantages :

• requires less kitchen staff than fully-plated service
• food arrives hot and stays hotter in service dishes
• food arrives quickly without the hassle of long buffet lines
• the guests are treated to the kind of individual service most only rarely see

and some disadvantages:

• requires the most service staff any of these options
• a lot more dishes to rent and service pieces are a bit more expensive to rent than plates and flatware
• a little more difficult to pull off for large groups, once again because of the rental situation but also because it's simply hard to find service staff experienced in this sort of service. This too, though, can be done.

There. Does that help?