Your wedding is a special occasion that calls for delicious and innovative cuisine that can impress guests and create a memorable experience. There have been several emerging ideas in 2023 wedding food trends that we are excited to share with you straight from the Wedding Trends Look Book. Scroll to find out all of the ways you can infuse these elements into your day from signature cocktails to dishes that reflect your culture.
Ready to embrace your inner foodie with a culinary journey? Thankfully, the traditional wedding menu has been forever changed thanks to popular TV shows like Top Chef and Chopped. This appetite for something different has pushed caterers to evolve their offerings and they are taking cues from the influence of trendy restaurants.
The wedding culinary scene now offers an expanded range of options from farm-to-table to vegan and even gluten-free options. Food and beverage are not just a part of the wedding checklist. For us, it is an opportunity to treat your guests, expand their palate, and excite their taste buds. We love to open their minds to items they typically wouldn’t ever think to try and watch them be astonished!
The desire for couples to have a guest experience that is both unique and memorable has led to an increased willingness to experiment. Creative culinary design will allow your chef to play with the presentation while making your wedding an incredible visual experience. As you are planning your wedding menu, observe and take notes while dining out. This can be a perfect source of inspiration!
Wholesome comfort foods will dominate menus in 2023, but move over mac and cheese and enter fusion ideas incorporating more vegetables and vegetable-alternative pasta like the Peruvian Potato gnocchi with cauliflower and lobster garnished with signature purple potato chips, above.
With the lack of travel caused by the pandemic, people are looking for ways to invoke a sense of faraway destinations. We’re embracing new flavors, textures, and colors, adding to the possibilities as flavor profiles change. Enter international fruits — alternative citrus, melons, and stone fruits wildly colorful with extraordinary shapes and flavors. Native to Mexico and Central America, mamey, for example, is a tropical fruit with a creamy texture and orange color similar to sweet potato or pumpkin. It has a smooth, rich sweetness that makes for decadent desserts like this trio, at right, featuring créme brûlée dessert, mousse, and mamey ice cream.
Things move fast in the culinary world, and this year global infusion will urge couples to showcase the traditional dishes of each family’s heritage that tell the couple’s story.
Whether Italian, Indian, Asian, or African, a great chef can design a plate with the right complementing flavor combinations. This trend has catering teams crafting a cultural mosaic from all over the globe.
The diversity and complexity of African cuisines are becoming more and more accessible to the US consumer. Discover African ingredients like fonio which has a rich, nutty flavor and a texture similar to couscous. You may also see garri which also has a nutty flavor and the consistency of cream of wheat. Shito is a spicy, sweet pepper sauce from Ghana delicious with a cheese spread. Harissa is another sauce from North Africa made of simple ingredients including red chiles, garlic, olive oil, citrus, and warm spices. Waakye, a Ghanaian cuisine, above, is a dish with cooked rice, pepper, shito, and spaghetti wrapped in green leaves.
The mixology craze has infiltrated the wedding scene and bartenders are now offering a beverage experience unlike anything we have tasted before. Cocktails have never been so diverse. Get ready for 2023 because the pandemic has driven a trend toward alcohol connoisseurs who are looking for high-quality drink experiences.
The signature cocktail may have taken a backseat to each person enjoying their favorite. One change we are seeing this year is in flavors. While nuanced tastes allowed the spirit to be more forward, big and bold zests are now coming to the forefront. Watch for beers with unusual flavors like chocolate or chili pepper, or ones that combine fruity and savory flavors that appeal to consumers’ desire for a more adventurous experience.
Fearless palettes have bartenders looking for new flavor profiles year after year. Ready-to-drink beverages like naturally-flavored seltzers are becoming elevated. Unique cocktail mixers have also driven awareness of new flavors as enthusiasts continue to look for eccentric flavor profiles.
Combining a variety of distinctive elements, like flowers and botanicals, with more traditional flavors helps mixologists maintain a well-balanced beverage. Think of a whiskey sour infused with mango, ginger, or chili pepper. A Moscow Mule becomes tropical with a hint of hibiscus. Introduce an air of adventure by combining an uncommon flavor like tangerine with more common flavors like cinnamon and thyme that creates the delicious Old Fashioned, above.
