Catering is a common means through which hosts can avoid the stress and mess of preparing food for their special event or personal occasion. Corporations, small businesses, families, brides and fundraisers may all hire a catering firm to handle the preparation and serving of food. For those who are Jewish, catering companies must address their specific dietary needs.
Catering or Jewish Catering
Jewish catering is simply catering that heeds certain religious dietary restrictions. As is the case with all types of catering, you arrange with the company to provide specific services and meals. These can be:
1. Buffets: This is self-serve catering with the food spread out on tables or stations of various types. In many cases, servers cut the meat into exact portions for each person and serve specific food to everyone. Dessert stations are usually self-serve with a server topping up the items when necessary.
2. Box Lunches: These are often common with office gatherings and seminars of both formal and informal types. The meals come in boxes according to the request of the clients in terms of both content and numbers. The meals may be kosher or not.
3. Plated Dinner Events: Servers hired by the catering company serve the food. They carry the meals to the tables at which the guests sit
4. Food Tucks: This is a new kind of catering. Food trucks supply the food and the flatware and cutlery as well as other related items. The guests line up at the food truck of their choice and obtain their meal, snack or other edible items in this manner.
In all instances, the food may or may not be kosher. The dishes may be certified as kosher or be prepared according to the same rabbinical standards such as those at Moty’sGrill and other food trucks, restaurants and diners across America. The extent to which the catering of your party or other event intends to follow kashrut standards depends upon several factors. These include the extent of the gathering’s religiosity and adherence to the traditional rules should govern the style of Jewish catering upon which you decide.
Jewish Catering in America
At one point, you would have found it hard to find a Jewish caterer outside the Jewish community. Of course, traditionally, all meals for events would have been prepared or vetted by the woman/women of the household. Household cooks of wealthier families took care of the meals when guests came. Poorer families made do with what they could afford and out together communal meals for special events.
Today, Jewish catering is big business. It has increased over the past decades. You can arrange for Jewish food along the religious spectrum from ultra-orthodox to ultra-reform to be part of any gathering you have in mind. Jewish catering now embraces diverse modes of service and delivery including such things as Moty’sGrill food trucks.