Reception Menu: Appetizer Trends
Reception Menu
Wedding guests may say they couldn’t eat another bite after all the fine cuisine at your wedding cocktail party, but your excellent wedding menu they discover on your menu cards when they take their seats in the reception ballroom always seems to get them hungry again.
After your first dance and the toasts, guests look forward to the first course coming their way. Among the top trends in wedding reception menus is unique appetizers chosen to complement the cocktail party menu you provided, and raise the bar in fine cuisine as the wedding reception begins.
Here are some of the top trends in wedding appetizers:
A Sensational Salad: Outdated wedding budget advice has advised couples to eliminate the salad course, but we’ve found wedding menu trends to embrace the salad once again. Given the gourmet menu offerings in salads, it’s no wonder. Now, you’ll find burata and citrus salads mixed with baby arugula, fennel, watercress and frisee. Mixed lettuces are now paired with red and yellow beets, aged Vermont goat cheese, roasted pears, and spiced walnuts. Salads are now part of fine cuisine, and are welcomed by guests who wish to eat lighter, healthier fare as part of a vegetarian wedding menu selection or an organic wedding menu.
Risotto: Keeping risotto out of the wedding cocktail party menu, it finds a place in your reception appetizer, especially when created as a mushroom, smoked chicken breast and truffle risotto, or a butternut squash risotto, or lobster risotto that wedding chefs make deliciously.
Seafood: Top wedding appetizer trends now include seared scallops, shrimp scampi, lobster ravioli, and other unique presentations of a seafood first course.
Soups: In hot or cold weather, soup servings are a top reception trend. Consider seafood bisques, truffled potato leek soup, butternut squash soup with duck confit hash.
Fruit-based: A classic appetizer is a plate of fresh melon and imported prosciutto, a staple in Italian wedding menus but quickly rising to a top wedding menu trend for all types of celebrations.
