The Catskills Tasting Menu & Farmer Entree Explained

Reception at our farm is a new and different experience. It’s about combining your love for a beautiful setting and gorgeous food, with a great party and spending quality time with family and friends. We are not a banquet hall or a country club, and your idea of an amazing wedding reception is not spending 5-6 hours stuck in one seat or standing in line for every drink. We go to great lengths to minimize the time your guests have to stand in line for drinks or the time they have to remain seated. The seated part of the dinner should only be long enough for speeches and family dances.

The key to accomplishing this is to eliminate many of the time-consuming "banquet hall" traditions of the past. We instead serve our delicious Catskills Tasting Menu. With our chefs' help, you will choose what courses will be served to your guests. Your guests will not pick which meats or proteins ahead of time, nor will they choose anything on the night of the reception. This shortens the time everyone has to remain seated; and nearly eliminates double ordering, double prep, and waste. This saves money, which we passed on to you. Planning becomes infinitely simpler for you as well. 

A Brief Summary of the Reception Dinner Food Program
The Cocktail Hour feature both served and stationary canapes, depending on which package you choose. Dinner starts with a composed salad just harvested from our greenhouse. The salad includes edible flowers and is already plated when guests first enter the barn, which adds color and beauty to your tables. It is served with local butter and farm bread. The second course is our wild mushroom risotto with black truffle, and then we serve the entree that you've chosen at the couple's tasting.  To shorten the seating time further, the dessert is served at our dessert bar, so guests can grab desserts when they want and move on to the dance floor or hang out by the bonfire if they prefer.

The Catskills Tasting Menu—Features ingredients grown locally and on our own farm.
These days all guests are familiar with and comfortable with the concept of a “tasting menu”; where the chef has chosen all the plates. In this case, you are choosing the menu for everyone based on our chef's seasonal selection. It's a bit more collaborative ahead of time while simplifying everything on the night of your wedding. Note: Regardless of which package you chose, your guests will still indicate on your RSVP card if they have allergies or dietary restrictions like vegan or vegetarian.  You will make the Tasting Menu decisions at the food tasting.

To create variety and excitement for the dinner, the kind of culinary experience our couples have been raving about over the years, we not only created the Catskills Tasting Menu but also introduced The Farmer's Entree (see below). All food packages are considered a Tasting Menu; however, the Silver package comes with a 3-course menu, with Gold and Platinum being 4-course Tasting Menus. Platinum includes the Farmers Entree, and Silver and Gold can easily upgrade to the Farmers Entree.

The Farmer's Entree
A composed plate of two proteins, with your selection of purée, and sides. The Farmers Entree gives guests an even greater sense of variety and excitement during the meal. The Farmer's Entree means you (the couple) pre-select two proteins for the entree part of the Tasting Menu. For instance, the entree features salmon and beef short ribs, like a "surf and turf.” Or combine chicken and beef short rib, if your group is not seafood people. If your package doesn't include the Farmer's plate, it can be upgraded for a small upcharge. 

The dessert is served at the dessert bar so the guests can move about and enjoy the party sooner.

Why can't the guests order what they want to eat at the reception?
There are a few reasons for this. It takes a lot of time out of your party and forces your guests to sit at the table much longer when they are eager to get up, dance, and move around. Taking orders, delivering them to the kitchen, and serving custom plates, with half the guests changing their minds, would take almost all night. That works at banquet halls when they want you seated most of the night because they don't have a beautiful natural setting.

...or order what they want ahead of time on their RSVP cards?
Even if guests were to make their protein selections on an RSVP card, few would remember what they selected, or they might change their minds and want the plate their neighbor picked instead.  We have to prepare nearly full amounts of each protein, to be sure everyone gets what they want. That means a much higher cost for you and a lot of waste, which is not part of the farm's spirit of preserving our environment. (note: DOH also prohibits us from packing food to go in this setting).  

If guests are to preorder, you also have to choose the exact seat for them, which is a huge hassle and requires constant reorganizing, sometimes all the way up to the reception night. The way to go is to assign guests to tables only and allow them to choose where to sit and next to whom.

Our current packages are priced based on you pre-selecting a protein (or two, in the case of the Farmers Entree).  There will be an up-charge if you want to go the slow, old-fashioned way, i.e., if your guests are asked to pre-select. If you don't mind staying seated for a lot longer, let us know and we can price out the upcharge for the banquet hall-style service for you.