Last year, Irving, Texas-based Omni
Hotels introduced the Sensational Meetings program, helping
planners use all five senses to bolster an event’s outcome. Now
Omni is ramping up the taste element.
Developed with help from nutritionists
and other experts at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde
Park, N.Y., the new banquet menus are designed to enhance
high-energy meetings with “stimulating” foods such as mandarin
ginger chews; challenging or stressful meetings with “calming”
teas, sushi and herb-roasted chicken; and recognition or
celebratory meetings with “the flavor of success,” including juice
in champagne flutes, chocolate champagne truffles and ancho
sugar-cured beef tenderloin.
Menus can be tailored to any event,
even if it doesn’t fall into a Sen-sational template, notes Stephen
Rosenstock, senior vice president of F&B and brand standards
for Omni. And if the meeting runs long? “The Culinary Institute
provided us with food groups to keep people from getting drowsy,”
Rosenstock says.