In a perfect banquet world, every plated entrée would be composed with delicate precision, boasting carefully layered flavors, and served at precisely the right temperature when it reaches the table. In reality, events for 1,000 people or more are organized chaos, with the clock being the ultimate arbiter of the finished product. As a result, the default banquet plating technique for decades looked something like a smiley face: starch for the left eye, vegetables for the right eye, and protein for the mouth. Slap a cover on it, and whisk it away to the ballroom.
“I don’t think anyone was ever really excited about it,” says Adam Hegsted, executive chef at Coeur d’Alene Casino Resort Hotel in Worley, Idaho. “Guests don’t want overcooked green beans or beef that has been sitting in a warmer and lost its crust. Times are tight, and people want a great experience.”
The customer’s desire for that great experience also includes more sophisticated presentations. At many hotels, however, back-of-the-house deadlines for banquet plating remain tight, along with labor and equipment available to execute more detailed displays. There are ways to adapt, though. Here, seasoned banquet veterans offer tips for enhancing speed and aesthetics when plating for large events.
MORE WITH LESS
“We want to make our banquet food as good as the food that comes off any hot line in a restaurant, and that’s the challenge,” Hegsted says. “But it’s attainable. It just has to be broken down into simple steps.”
One of those simple steps is acknowledging that speed is king in a banquet setting, and the more items placed on a plate, the more time it will take to get to the guest. Generally speaking, banquet entrées consist of four different components that interact with each other to hold the presentation as well as provide balanced nutrition. They include:
- Starch (such as potatoes, rice, or risotto)
- Protein (such as beef, poultry, or seafood)
- Vegetables (to add color)
- Sauce (to enhance texture and flavor)
“We usually put no more than four components on a plate. A lot of times, that’s where people go wrong. When you’re putting six, seven, eight items on the plate, it really slows the process down,” says Michael Swann, executive chef at Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center in Nashville. Swann oversees more than two million banquet covers each year at his property and has served individual functions for more than 12,000 people. He has learned a few tricks along the way to add more to the plate without adding extra steps.
“Take asparagus and Roma tomatoes, for instance. We put the asparagus inside a Roma tomato ring, like a napkin ring, before the plate-up. So we have two vegetables for the guest, but it’s only one step to put it on the plate,” Swann says.
Other properties save time by putting sauce in goosenecks on each table, where the guest can add it to the entrée. “We usually don’t sauce the plate,” says Julian Grainger, executive chef at the Hilton Minneapolis. “We garnish it with a salsa or simple splash of herbs, such as a rosemary sprig.”
SHOWTIME
During a plate-up, many chefs create lines, with each cook in charge of a single item. Depending on the size of the function, these lines are multiplied to meet the service deadline.
Swann says at Gaylord Opryland a line of four cooks can finish 500 plates in about 30 minutes. Consequently, labor becomes a mathematical equation instead of a guessing game, which is important when trying to replicate an “à la minute” experience for the guest. “The assembly line method is the best way because there is somebody looking at every component that goes on the plate, and we have an inspector at the end.”
Each cook has photos or “dummy plates” of the finished entrée as well, so there’s no hesitation about how it should look. Over the course of a few thousand plates, that can save several minutes.
BUILT TO LAST
At a restaurant, the journey from kitchen to table is often easy because there’s little real estate to cover. That’s less often the case in banquet settings. At Gaylord Opryland, Swann says plates can travel “up to a half mile” before reaching their destination.
The ride inside a hot box can be bumpy and jarring, with sharp turns around corners, so the entrée should be constructed to survive the trip. Many chefs address this at the beginning of a plate-up, using the starch as a sticky anchor to hold other components together. Swann says certain vessels can also help protect the intended aesthetics once the plate leaves the kitchen. “We often use a coupe dish. It’s half bowl, half plate, and doesn’t let the sauce roll all over during transport.”
Another reason the presentation must be durable is the service staff may be rushing to get the meal to the table. “We need to be conscious that they might not be holding the plates perfectly or setting them down smoothly,” says Hegsted. “So the dish must look good at all angles, and it has to hold up however it’s carried.”
PUT A LID ON IT
Height on the plate is another area in which restaurant-style expectations collide with the limits of the banquet kitchen. Tall food is often what the guest sees on the Food Network and in other culinary media, but in a banquet setting, the lid sets the limit.
“The unfortunate side to doing large groups is we have to put lids on our plates, and we have to stack them five plates high in a hotbox,” says Grainger. “Consequently, we only have about two to three inches of height to play with.”
That doesn’t mean everything on the plate automatically reverts to the flat “smiley face.” Swann, for example, cuts fingerling potatoes in half. “They stack very well. We can make a little pyramid, put a protein or vegetables on top of it, and it holds together, creating a great presentation,” says Swann. “Good food is the price of entry in our market, so when the customer looks at the plate, it should be consistent, whether it’s for 2,500 people or 10,000. It’s all a matter of creating a mental mise en place so you can execute ideas quickly."
