How to Spice up Your Party: Ideas for Serving Appetizers

Today we wanted to give you a few simple ideas for creating a fantastic appetizer spread at a party. This can be useful whether you are a caterer or a humble civilian hosting some friends for a relaxed soirée.

One thing you can do when you have a large spread of food is put dishes at slightly different heights. This will help your table feel less crowded and make the different dishes on the table more visible to your guests. Rather than having a few very large dishes, you can split things up into several smaller dishes to help you achieve this effect. 

Another idea is to take your toppings, dips, and other serving dishes and place them on top of the food dishes (like you might see at a restaurant) or find another creative way to raise them up a little bit. Not only does this help you show off your serving dishes, but also adds a little bit of visual variety to the terrain of your buffet or spread.

Make sure to organize hors d'oeuvres and appetizers so that everything your guests need is available nearby. For example if they need toothpicks, spreads, and dipping sauce for a particular appetizer make sure it's on the tray or plate with the appetizer or otherwise nearby, this way your guests don't have to hunt around the table for what they need. It’s a simple but important thing that can actually be hard to follow through on.

It can also be fun to add greenery or other natural elements to your table setting or buffet spread. For example at Christmas you might consider interspersing some festive garlands to your table or even pinecones.

Be clever about where you store drinks for your party as well as mixers. Finding a cabinet or shelf in your living room or gathering space to store more of certain snacks, drinks, or drink mixers can save you trips back and forth to the kitchen.

Try using trays to organize your appetizers and drink offerings. You can use decorations, the ingredients of the cocktail itself, garnish for the drinks, and other items like a cocktail shaker to give the cocktail tray an interesting, coordinated look. A tray of appetizers can handle anything else that might be needed to make that appetizer complete: the appetizer itself, dipping sauces and spreads, extra utensils like spreading knives, additional napkins and plates, etc.

Coordinate colors or have a theme for your spread of food. You can coordinate the look of the tablecloth, dishes, napkins, garnishes, greenery, and other decorations to make your buffet really come alive for guests. If you want to go with a natural theme, for example, you could use wood slices for drink coasters. Flowers and candles can also add a great deal to the look of your table.

Don’t be afraid to go big with cocktails and other drinks. Have cocktails with vibrant colors, fruit, interesting garnishes, and find some unique glasses to serve them in. If you are serving champagne, consider champagne flutes that have an interesting design, or go with a more classic flute and add a bit of fruit as garnish.

Take these ideas, add your own flare, and have a fantastic party.