Banquets Reborn

Spread-out spread:
Starwood Hotels favors
long rectangular tables.

Hotel banquets can be wonderful, memorable experiences -- but rarely have the food and decor been the stars of the show. The logistics of feeding hundreds of people all at the same time has traditionally dictated that everyone sits in a giant windowless box and eats the same mediocre food that has been sitting in a warmer for an hour.

All that is changing, however. Hotel companies have begun to innovate in this department, to create banquets that look less like stuffy hotel ballrooms and more like celebrity shindigs or dinner parties at home, with food that tastes as good as in a high-end restaurant.

“The impression is that hotel food is not good food,” says Daniel Briones, CPCE (certified professional catering executive), president of the Columbia, Md.-based National Association of Catering Executives and director of catering at the Four Seasons Hotel Philadelphia. On the contrary, he says, “In general, hotels have amazing culinary teams, amazing creative teams that can design restaurant-style experiences.”

Better food isn’t the only positive development. Following are 10 trends in hotel banqueting that are changing the way people eat en masse.

1. Skirting skirting

What’s out: The major hotel chains are doing away with those once-ubiquitous rectangular buffet tables with a skirt velcroed on. Westin Hotels & Resorts, for example, will be completely rid of them by 2008.

What’s in: Westin instead favors setups with clean lines and a minimum of visual noise. Daniel Briones at the Four Seasons Hotel Philadelphia uses simple, elegant, unskirted tables that fit together in a variety of ways, depending on what shape is needed.

Chicago-based Hyatt Hotels & Resorts has even made an effort to reduce the prevalence of buffet tables, instead using an assortment of benches, ladders, stainless steel tables and risers from Alu, which are used in many retail stores to display merchandise. “We’re looking a lot to the retailers, and how grocery stores are displaying their products,” says Steve Enselein, vice president of catering and convention services for Hyatt. “We’re asking our banquet people to look at storefront windows for inspiration.”

At Disney Resorts, based in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., the stainless steel prep tables from the kitchen often are brought out to serve as buffet tables, for a chic industrial look.

Bruno Lunghi, vice president of event management for Marriott International, based in Bethesda, Md., not only is fixing the tables but what’s on the tables, by elevating food with purpose-built risers rather than milk crates swathed in linens.

Skirted tables are gone at many break setups, too. At some member properties of White Plains, N.Y.-based Starwood Hotels & Resorts, soft drinks are served on grocery display racks and food on bakers’ racks. Other hotels use sideboards and armoires for breaks.

2. A lukewarm reception

What’s out: Warmers of all kinds

What’s in: The chains recently have begun to get rid of hot boxes that plated food sits in before it’s served. Alternative options include serving the food family-style or French-style, where dishes are plated right at the table.

On buffets, chafing dishes are going by the wayside, to be replaced by the likes of serving trays, woks, paella pans, cast-iron skillets, and heated bricks or marble slabs.

Hyatt is working with a task force to come up with alternative heat sources to keep food warm, including induction cookers, which heat food without being hot to the touch. “The chafing dish only gives the illusion of heat, anyway,” says Steve Enselein.

For now, the food stays hot because it’s served in smaller batches, which Hyatt’s catering experts claim is not too difficult a feat to pull off.

3. Room for squares

What’s out: Round banquet tables

What’s in: Hyatt, Marriott and Starwood are beginning to find alternatives to round tables. At Hyatt, for example, the hotels are mixing square and rectangular tables with round ones. Every property will have access to rectangular tables for a reasonable price, even if it means putting 6-foot by 30-inch tables together. David Dvorak, vice president of catering and convention services in North America for Starwood, is experimenting with using long communal tables that seat up to 18 people for banquets taking place at Sheraton Hotels and Resorts.

A clean look: Marriott is experimenting with purpose-built risers.

And it’s not just the tables that are going square. At the Marriott chain, banquets now feature square china, as well as stemless water and soft-drink glasses -- which aren’t square but certainly are more angular than before. “The water glass with a stem on it is kind of old-fashioned,” says Bruno Lunghi. “It doesn’t have the crisp, clean lines we’re looking for.”

STATION MASTERY

An over-the-top Cobb salad
station from Sonesta

The seated banquet experience at Boston-based Sonesta Hotels & Resorts is akin to what one would experience at a fine-dining restaurant. For example, silverware is not pre-set; rather, it is set anew with each course. Servers are educated about the food and wine being served. The plate is set down in a specific way, and the napkin is replaced for the dessert course.

However, it is the food itself that Sonesta senior vice president Kathy Sonnabend Rowe takes the most pride in, which prompted the launch of Food Is Art, an initiative and commitment to serve the freshest food with a beautiful presentation.

“Our whole philosophy is, we try to establish a baseline at pretty close to the same pricing as what our competition is doing, but to do it in a much more creative and innovative way,” says Rowe, a third-generation member of the hotel chain’s founding family. “I feel we’re a trendsetter in the industry.”

Perhaps Sonesta excels most at chef-staffed action stations, which produce food that is fresher than it would be if it were plated and gives attendees more choice in what they eat. Here are a few simple but effective substitutions that Sonesta has made, all at a reasonable cost to planners.

Instead of: Juice from a carton

Expect: Orange, tangerine and grapefruit juice squeezed in front of guests

Instead of: White, wheat and rye

Expect:  Hand-cut 12-grain bread with pistachios and delicate daubs of homemade preserves

Instead of: Pancakes

Expect: A chef preparing silver-dollar pancakes at an action station and topping them with fresh raspberries and blueberries

Instead of: The deli buffet

Expect: A panini station, with portobello/brie, prosciutto/buffalo mozzarella and ham/smoked gouda sandwiches

Instead of: Roast steamship round of beef

Expect: Carved tenderloin, rack of lamb and duck breast, served over a bed of fresh salad

Instead of: Lobster bake

Expect: Whole poached lobster tail served over a smashed red bliss potato, drizzled with beurre blanc, plus corn on the cob, sliced chorizo, and steamed littleneck clams in white wine and garlic butter. -- J.V.

4. More choices

What’s out: Universal chicken with sauce

What’s in: Last year, Hyatt introduced a program called Personal Preference, which allows meeting planners to create a three-entree menu for attendees to select from when they sit down to eat. The meal has both a salad and an appetizer course, which add an extra 15 minutes to the dinner, to give the chefs time to prepare the individualized entrees. At the end, a dessert sampler is placed on the table, to give attendees a choice there as well.

Bottom line: “We want to allow people to be more in control of their food experience,” says Enselein.

Though Hyatt might have been the first to announce it, other hotel companies, including Disney, Marriott and Beverly Hills, Calif.-based Hilton Hotels, have been offering a selection of entrees for years.

Indeed, Hilton is striving to redefine what goes onto the plate in an effort to make meals more restaurant-style. “It’s not your typical, ‘What’s my starch, what’s my vegetable?’ ” says Al Ferrone, senior regional director, food and beverage, for the chain. “It’s more like, ‘Here’s the meal and some things that complement it.’”

At Disney events, guests get a broad choice of wines, as well. Servers don’t just offer a red and a white; they describe up to six varietals and vintages and discuss how they pair with the food being served.

5. Smarter online and at the table

What’s out: Confusing menus in a Word document

What’s in: Lunghi is working on creating online banquet menus that are easy to navigate and understand. The menu will be written in a simple and straightforward style, and each item will be accompanied by a photo. Hilton is moving in that direction as well, with tentative plans to build a meeting planners’ website that includes multimedia menus.

“Guests are more educated than ever, because there are so many food channels today,” notes Jose Mota, catering and convention services director at Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort & Spa. To that end, Disney tries to teach banquet attendees something, whether it’s about the food served or the history of the banquet’s theme. The chefs even come out and talk with the guests about the meal.

6. Local flavor

What’s out: Tasteless food

What’s in: Several chains are focusing on standardizing food across the brand and bringing in regional dishes to make each destination unique and allow for local sourcing of ingredients. It might seem like a paradox, but it works. For example, at Hyatt, just 25 to 30 percent of the menus are devoted to dishes that can be found anywhere in the brand, while the rest is open to chef preference. (Hyatt also is developing standards for how the food is prepared, how long it can sit out on the buffet and what types of foods and condiments will be offered.)

This focus on local items also means a seasonal perspective. “No longer do we do menus with the standard vegetable sets,” says Jose Mota of Disney. “We talk about what is in season.”

7. Healthful food

What’s out: Atkins, South Beach diets

What’s in: Hilton, Marriott, Radisson and Starwood are putting an emphasis on using more healthful food -- and not just food that fits a particular dieting fad, emphasizes Starwood’s Dvorak. Marriott has a program called Fit for You, and Renaissance offers Eat, Drink, Balance. Both are geared toward providing low-fat and low-calorie options for those attendees with such preferences. But Lunghi points out that the number-one dinner entree remains filet mignon. “Most customers still like to indulge in items that are not so healthy,” he admits.

Hors d’oeuvres at the
Four Seasons Philadelphia
are mini-entrees.

8. Inventive nibbling

What’s out: Traditional butler-passed hors d’oeuvres

What’s in: Pre-meal noshes are getting more stylish. At Starwood hotels, for example, soups are being served in shot glasses. At the Four Seasons Philadelphia, hors d’oeuvres are being upsized into two-bite entrees on little plates. Disney has gone away from butler passing, instead setting high-end nibbles into the table centerpieces and onto themed stations around the room.

9. Uniform changes

What’s out: Black-and-white tuxedoes, except at formal galas

What’s in: Some Marriott hotels provide staff with color uniforms, which not only adds to an event’s atmosphere but also helps guests to better identify them. Servers passing cocktails such as mojitos and cosmopolitans might wear a T-shirt with a menu printed right on the front.

Magic Kingdom: Disney
uses theatrical lighting to
marvelous effect.

10. Lighting the way

What’s out: Lighting trusses or trees

What’s in: After extensive research, Marriott management has decided to invest in improving its banquet space across Marriott and Renaissance hotels globally. Most noticeably, the ballrooms will have built-in lighting systems that allow planners to change the color of the room and spotlight various areas with ease. Says Lunghi. “We want it to be part of the design of that room.”