Gaining Confidence While Cooking

Family Dinners: Four Timely Ways To Enjoy Smooth Food Service

Enjoying a family dinner at a restaurant is a great experience where people can catch-up, interact, and eat a great meal. When big parties arrive at locations, delays can happen due to bulk orders. Without having to rush through the meal, you and your family can still enjoy timely service and great food by using the following four tips. These tips allow you to plan ahead and create a strategy that works for all large group dining outings.

Order Ahead of Time

It's common to make reservations for group dining ahead of time, but you can take things one step further by ordering ahead of time. Not only will this help cut down on cooking time, but it can also help even out meal distribution. For example, someone that orders a hamburger and fries will likely get their meal a lot faster than someone who ordered a pizza. By ordering the meal ahead of time, the food can be properly planned so that everyone is served around the same time. Many restaurants feature their full menus online. This makes it a lot easier to pick out items and show the menu to other family members.

Sharing Appetizers

Start off the meal right by purchasing a large appetizer platter that everyone can share. Large platters of french fries or boneless chicken wings are easy to distribute among everyone at the table. It will help speed up the arrival of your main course and provide a nice treat before the main food arrives.

Drink Pitchers

Ordering separate drinks can create a lot of delays, especially for people that are waiting on refills. Allow everyone to drink up by ordering a variety of pitcher beverages. This includes a pitcher of water, soda, or beer depending on the party. Instead of having the waitstaff attend to each individual person, people can serve themselves with a pitcher. If needed, new pitcher refills can be served to the table.

Sides & Condiments

Once the meal is served, you can make eating management a lot easier with extra side and condiment requests. When the order is placed, it's a good idea to request extra ketchup bottles, dipping sauces, and seasoning shakers like salt and pepper. This allows people to have easy access to items without the need to constantly pass things back and forth across a table. The exact condiments and sides that you need will depend on the type of food that is ordered. For example, if you're eating at a Mexican restaurant, you may order a few sides of sour cream that the table can share together.

By implementing one or more of these tips, you can ensure that the dinner goes smoothly and a majority of delays are avoided. Once you find a groove, it's easy to plan all types of large family outings. To learn more about group dining, contact a restaurant like Sabatino's Italian Restaurant


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