Critique my lunch menu please

[FarrowAndBaller]

Looking for critique on my lunch menu - both for range/appeal and also quantities.

It’s an informal garden lunch for 16 ish adults and 10 ish children (aged baby - 7 ish). Fork buffet style, invited from 1pm - so I’m expecting most of the kids will have had lunch beforehand. A couple of vegetarians and gluten free guests but no other dietary needs. The menu currently looks like:

Snacks (1-2pm):

• Olives (600g, with more available)
• Manchego cheese, sliced (400g)
• Focaccia (x2, each made with 500g flour)
• Crisps (600g - 4 sharing bags, with more available)

Lunch (2-3:30pm)

• Sliced piri piri chicken breast with roast peppers on spinach. (2kg chicken, est.16 breasts), 1kg roasted red peppers, 200g spinach)
• Chickpea, feta & mint salad (3 200g packs feta, 3x 570g jars of chickpeas)
• Potato tortilla (5x500g ready made packs)
• Caponata (5 aubergines, 3 courgettes, 2 red onions, 6 sticks celery, 300g olives in a tomato sauce)
• Herby chicken breast skewers for kids (using mini fillets from 2kg chicken above)
• Caprese skewers for kids (300g mini mozzarella balls, with some cherry tomatoes and basil)

Pudding (4pm):

• Lemon possets served in lemon halves (1.2kg cream)
• Giant strawberries (2.4kg)

Any suggestions for things to consider changing?

Mini sausages are often a hit. You can get both meat and veggie ones. Hummus and breadsticks/crudites are easy and usually popular.

Personally I’d add a few more dessert options. Cake, ice creams, biscuits. And more fruit.

To max it out a bit, i would add the following:

Platter of cherry tomatoes, cucumbers & carrots
Deli meat platter to go with the starters
1 large potato salad
1 pasta salad or couscous
1 poached salmon side
Cake
Ice lollies

Sounds perfect to me. Thats not too much meat.

Maybe add another salad

2 kilos is 4.4 lbs = 70 ozs
26 mouths = 2.7 ozs per person

Google suggests an average portion of chicken breast is 3 to 4 ozs

Def not too much meat.

now I agree the children will eat less but some adults will want more

In her update the Op agreed she would be getting more chicken.

edited for spelling error

How did it go?

2kg chicken is 16 breasts?! I dont think so. That is 125 g per person. No way enough, and you want to use th inner filets for the kids. 125 g after volume loss in cooking is a sliver of meat. You need to double that at least. Also add a salad and a veggie option. Halloumi skewers perhaps. Also think the idea with a biscuit for the posset is good.

Are the gluten free people gluten intolerant or Coeliac? BIG difference.

Not nearly enough food! 2 focaccia for 26 people?!

I’d add some brownies for dessert, a mouthful of lemon posset wouldn’t do it for me 😂

Sounds perfect! I’d love that.

Sounds lovely! My kids would happily eat everything you've planned for them, but having the kids served earlier is a very good idea. Saves lots of whining!

I would do something like a spanokoptia instead of the omlettes/tortillas for the veggie option. I have a real aversion to those sweaty packaged one.

Did you read both of the OP's posts (there are only two)? Or notice that the meal was a month ago?

It sounds lovely for the adults but the nibbles/snacks will be gone in minutes - people will be hungry - so either provide more, and risk people eating a bit less from the main courses, or serve the mains earlier.

For the kids and hungrier adults, I'd add in a couple of trays of pizza which can be cut into squares and served with the nibbles and into bigger pieces for the kids. I used to do this a lot for big lunches like yours, with kids and adults coming - fresh bought or frozen dough and squidge it onto big oven trays, passata and ready-grated mozzarella, or pre-make your own dough and keep it in the fridge.

Note to self: read to the end :D

Like everyone else I think it’s not enough though I would say not enough of anything.

It went really well thanks. I did 2.5kg of chicken in the end, and had 7-8 breasts (approx 1kg) leftover, together with maybe half of the caponata and 30% of the feta salad. The green salad with avocado was very popular - I did seconds of that, so thank you for that idea.

Other key learnings... The kids mineswept all the crisps in minutes. I had more but didnt want them to exclusively eat crisps - so I’m taking crisps off the menu entirely for future child-friendly events. We got through 1.2kg olives - big hit with adults and children. Pizza for the kids was perfect - various hopeful parents offered them a plate from the adult buffet, but I didn’t see any go for it. They didn’t really eat the chicken strips, but the babybels/crackers/cucumber plate was eaten.

Overall it worked well in the circumstances (limited time to prep on the day), but I think I’ll revert to my usual approach of something like pulled pork in a slow cooker and then tacos or rolls etc - I think people get more excited about hot food, especially when drinking. The canapé style desserts were well received though - less of a commitment than getting a whole plate of dessert - so I would definitely do that again.