What should you look for at the tasting?

Hardly any appointment in the whole of wedding planning is such a pleasure and so badly used. Two people sit at a laid table, are served three courses at leisure, and find everything excellent. That is not luck; it is what a head chef does when plating two portions.

On the wedding day the same kitchen plates ninety portions at once, often in a room that is not a kitchen. The distance between those two situations is the real subject of the appointment. This piece shows when the tasting should happen, who should come, which nine things to check, and what absolutely has to be put in writing afterwards. Choosing the supplier comes first — that is under choosing a caterer.

The right moment is after the shortlist and before the signature. Taste too early and you eat your way through three suppliers and end up with fullness rather than a basis for a decision. Taste too late and you are already under contract and can change nothing.

In practice that means: two suppliers who have already answered all the hard questions — kitchen, staff, headcount deadline, price structure — go through to a tasting. A third appointment is rarely worth it.

On timing: six to nine months before the wedding is a good corridor. Earlier and the seasonal decision is often still open; later and the sought-after suppliers are booked. Note as well that many operations batch their tastings and only offer them on certain weekdays — ask before you invent a date you would like.

There is no universal model for the cost, and the handling differs sharply between operations and between markets. Three variants are common:

• Free, usually at smaller operations or where the intention to book is already very concrete.
• Charged and credited on booking. The commonest and fairest variant: you pay for the appointment and it comes off the bill if you sign.
• Charged with no credit, often for elaborate menus or when several people come along.

Ask beforehand which variant applies and whether drinks are included. And ask whether extra people cost anything — the answer decides whom you bring.

The temptation to bring the parents and the witnesses is strong. Resist it at least partly: every extra person brings an extra opinion, and a menu designed to satisfy six people will be the dullest one on offer.

A workable party is two to four people: the two of you plus at most two others — sensibly, people whose judgement you value and who have a role on the day. Someone with a dietary restriction is especially useful as a guest, because it shows how seriously the operation takes special requests.

Bring five things:

1. The running order of the day with times, at least roughly. When the drinks reception, when the meal, when the cake, when the late-night food.
2. The approximate guest count and the number of children with their ages.
3. The list of dietary restrictions, as far as it is known already.
4. Photos or measurements of your venue, above all of the area where the kitchen or buffet is meant to stand.
5. A notebook, seriously. After the third course and two glasses nobody remembers the second.

Point 1 changes the appointment the most. A meal starting at eight looks different from one at three, and a two-and-a-half-hour drinks reception needs more than canapes. With the running order in hand you talk about actual times rather than about courses — the basics are under menu planning for wedding catering.

Go in with a list. The nine points below are chosen so that you can observe them at the table without needing any expertise.

Point 2 is the most effective and never gets done. On the wedding day there is a wait between plating and eating at every table, at some tables ten minutes. A fish that is perfect fresh can be dry after ten minutes. Test it rather than hoping.

Point 7 sounds like aesthetics and is a capacity question. If a plate is built with tweezers it takes two minutes; ninety of them are three hours of work. Either there is enough kitchen staff for that, or the plate looks different on the day than it did at the tasting. Ask exactly that, openly and pleasantly: what does this plate look like when you are making ninety?

And write down a score from one to five after each course before you talk to each other. Otherwise the first impression voiced takes over the room and you end up with one opinion rather than four.

The core of the appointment is scaling, and it can be discussed surprisingly concretely if you ask the right questions. Four areas are affected.

• Simultaneity. Ninety main courses have to be on the tables within a few minutes. That only works with enough service staff and a plating station near the room. Ask how many plates go out per run and how many runs there are.
• How much is prepared in advance. A lot is part-cooked and finished on site. That is entirely normal and unavoidable in quantity — but it does not work equally well for every dish. Ask which components of your menu are prepared ahead.
• The kitchen on site. If your venue has no fixed kitchen, that changes the menu. Anything fried, anything cooked to order and anything that demands split-second timing is harder out of a mobile kitchen.
• The route to the table. Eighty metres across a field costs temperature. Someone who knows that plans hot boxes in — someone who does not serves it lukewarm.

From those four points follows a recommendation that holds up in practice: choose robust dishes for the big number and put the refinement into the courses that run in small quantities or without time pressure — starter, drinks reception, dessert table. Braises, slow-cooked dishes and anything with a sauce forgive a wait; anything quickly seared does not.

Close this block by asking for a reference at your scale. Not the prettiest wedding, but the largest one with this menu. If the answer is well below your guest count, that is not a knock-out — but it belongs in the balance, and it makes the answer about staffing more important.

A tasting almost always ends in a good mood and verbal promises. Those are precisely the problem: four months later nobody remembers that the sauce was meant to be less sweet and that a second vegetarian course had been agreed.

So send a short summary within two days and have it confirmed. It should contain:

1. The menu as discussed, course by course, with the agreed changes.
2. The vegetarian, vegan and children's versions — each in full, not as a note.
3. Every promise about quantity: second helpings, number of canapes at the reception, late-night food.
4. The service style per course, if it varies.
5. The agreed staffing level and the hours it is on site.
6. The deadline for the final headcount and what can still be changed after it.
7. What happens to the cost of the tasting.

Point 6 deserves particular attention, because money hangs on it. By when you report the number, how long you may revise upwards, and whether there is a minimum are contract matters and follow the law of the country you book in — rely on your contract, not on a rule of thumb. Set your own RSVP deadline well before it; a reply that counts itself makes that far easier than a collection of messages and phone calls, see online RSVP for your wedding.

And keep the dietary restrictions separate from the menu. They change until shortly before the date and need a format of their own so that they reach the kitchen — what that looks like is under telling the caterer about allergies.