I think the suggestion to have different options, well-marked, is the way to go. I expect this is more of grazing situation, rather than a main meal.
Are all those people going to be there at the same time? Do you need to provide something different for early morning (fruit is definitely good, as well as some sort of gluten-free oat bar) than late evening?
Mini-rice cakes (without dairy on them, but maybe some other flavorings)
Do your own nut mixture.
Veggie tray with dairy and non-dairy dips
Gluten-free tortilla chips with some sort of salsa
Group the restrictions and find something for each group.
Little chocolate things / Nakd bars / some other “health bar”
Some sort of berry parfait with oats and non-dairy or dairy yogurt
I find fruit plate/salad that has lots of berries (especially good tasting ones) to be better than the melon-heavy fruit salad that is common at some restaurants
Is seafood something that you would normally offer? It seems it would be easy to avoid, except where it’s hidden as an ingreadient.
Not for the tomato or allium or gluten person, but Bruschetta with garlicky tomato is yummy.
As there’s one person who has specifically mentioned they liked some of the previous offerings, I would try to make sure to include at least some of those as well.
I didn’t read it that way, to me it came across as ‘I know this is really difficult and I don’t expect to be accommodated, but since you asked…’. In fact that was how I read the majority.
As others have said, clearly almost nothing will work for everyone, so you just need to prepare a small selection of clearly labelled plates wherein at least one of them can be consumed by each guest, being careful to avoid cross contamination. Anyone who still doesn’t appreciate that effort is welcome to bring their own food and/or eat elsewhere.
As much as I am ready to jump on the roll-eyes, aren’t-we-so-pwecious school of judging food restrictions, I’ve got to say that the respondents to your menu question (which I applaud you for asking) sound pretty sane. Vegan/vegetarian as a moral choice is something I hope we can all respect whether or not we agree. Genuine health/allergy issues, accompanied by acknowledgment of the difficulties in meeting the restrictions those issues entail, are fine.
This is basically my long-winded agreement with @Chronos in post #8.
As a practical matter, I note that no one seems to object to the presence of things they can’t eat, as long as they can clearly see and avoid those ingredients. So … how about a make-your-own salad bar that starts with a luscious bowl of mixed greens? This should be fine for everyone as long as no scallions (an allium) are mixed in.
This could be followed by separate, clearly labeled containers, with separate spoons, of things people could add to their salads: chickpeas and other beans, chopped tomatoes, corn kernels, etc.
The one difficulty I see here is with dressings. You’d need to have several, clearly labeled.
Side accompaniments like pita or corn chips would be fine, if appropriately labeled just in case - obviously something like pita bread will have gluten.
no peanuts, no seafood , some nice vegan and vegetarian options, and a few Gluten free variants.
And then you would be better telling the handful of the hardest to cater cases: sorry we cant accomodate you, bring your own food, and here is $10* for your trouble.
Make sure your coffee station is legit. Get a professional coffeemaker if you can, and if not, multiple home coffeepots. Have a selection of creamers and sweeteners. No flavored coffee, decaf only if you have an extra pot for it. An electric kettle and a selection of teas would be great. This is, IMO, priority 1.
Tell Dr. Pepper that you won’t be prepping the foods, but you can’t make a solid guarantee that anything will be capsicum-free.
Packaged everything.
Fruit trays
Veggie trays
Meat and cheese board if you can afford it
A selection of crackers, including some gluten-free
Individual bags of chips, the kind you buy in a big box and get like 2-3 dozen bags
A big bowl of snack-sized chocolates, like you’d buy for Halloween
A drink station including lemonade and iced tea and a cooler full of sodas.
A bottle of bourbon that you hide in the suite for yourself.
If you’re really wanting to do some hot food, I still wouldn’t do it, because that’s a pain you don’t need.
And a pair of scissors so you can cut out the nutrition facts, ingredients, and allergen warning panels to put next to the opened stuff on a plate like a bag of cookies.
I don’t even know that I’d have anything like that. It’s wasteful, sure, to go with individual servings–but if you can afford it, an occasion like this is where it’s worth sticking to the individual stuff.
Passive-aggressive how? He answered honestly, and then also said that he recognizes how difficult his diet is and he doesn’t expect it to be catered to. And it’s not like he chose to have pancreatic issues.
Also, of course, chicken wouldn’t work for the three vegetarians, either.
Why would you assume that? A solid olive with pimento wouldn’t be any less allergenic than a solid olive without pimento.
Given that one of the two severe allergies listed is to capsicums, that’s a really bad idea.
Cherry or grape tomatoes would probably have less risk of cross-contamination than chopped.
I’m going through a similar thing with a conference I’m hosting soon. Fortunately we’re paying the hotel a lot of money for it to be their problem. I just passed the information on to them.
Mostly I went through the reception menus and made sure that no event was all sea food or all meat. The meals are all buffet style, and everything is made in house, so the hotel has full control over how things are prepared, and knows exactly what went into each item. They’ll post ingredients, and the staff can answer questions, or even ask the chef. Then people can avoid things they need to avoid.
Originally I was going to ask the attendees about “restrictions and preferences”, but the hotel had me change that to “allergies and sensitivities”. I suspect some people still answered for “I don’t like” instead of “I can’t eat”, but it’s definitely not my place to make that distinction. I’ve known people who will be in the bathroom for 12 hours if they eat garlic, and other people who just don’t like garlic.
If they genuinely don’t expect their highly restricted diet to be catered to, why lay it out in excruciating detail?
I don’t know if passive-aggressive is exactly the right term for it, but it’s something similar to that. Do you really have any doubt that this person would sulk if they showed up and there was nothing that they could eat?
The way I see it, even if someone says that they don’t expect you to accommodate their diet, it’s polite to at least make some attempt. And by him explaining his diet, he’s at least making it possible for me to attempt to be polite.
He might also have had some bad experiences in the past where people have asked him why he’s the only one not eating any of the food, so maybe he’s trying to forestall that in advance by explaining why he won’t eat the food.