This post is created thanks to a coversation I had on Saturday regarding reviewing feasts. A friend has started doing detailed reviews of feasts that she goes to and someone who doesn't cook was talking about it. I explained that the review she did for Storvik was one that I requested. I also explained that, while flattering, a review of "good feast" isn't really useful. I'd rather see a post talking about both the good and the bad then a simple statement of "good feast" or "feast sucked". Either way, a one sentence review is useless to a cook.
At the same time constructive critisim is an important idea. To see the post I wrote about this subject a couple of years ago go here.
Keep in mind that when we're in the kitchen we have no idea of what happens outside. We don't know if it seems like the food is taking forever between courses or if the food is coming out too fast. We don't know if one table had so much food they couldn't eat it or the next table snuck in an extra person so needs more food or had one person who so loves a specific dish that the rest of the table didn't get anything. Some people want one serving each and others want to take the leftovers home with them.
Detailed reactions of feasts (regardless of who cooked them) helps in planning for the future. Since I'm not sure how other people feel, I've created a
At the same time constructive critisim is an important idea. To see the post I wrote about this subject a couple of years ago go here.
Keep in mind that when we're in the kitchen we have no idea of what happens outside. We don't know if it seems like the food is taking forever between courses or if the food is coming out too fast. We don't know if one table had so much food they couldn't eat it or the next table snuck in an extra person so needs more food or had one person who so loves a specific dish that the rest of the table didn't get anything. Some people want one serving each and others want to take the leftovers home with them.
Detailed reactions of feasts (regardless of who cooked them) helps in planning for the future. Since I'm not sure how other people feel, I've created a
Do you cook for the SCA
I dabble in the kitchen occasionally
9(50.0%)
What there's an event outside the kitchen?
3(16.7%)
I eat feast but don't cook it
5(27.8%)
They serve food at SCA events?
0(0.0%)
What is the SCA?
0(0.0%)
How often do you do eat feast in the SCA
Every event
4(22.2%)
When the menu sounds good
2(11.1%)
When specific people are involved with the cooking
3(16.7%)
If I feel like it
3(16.7%)
Never
1(5.6%)
If a cook - how often are you in the kitchen
Every event for my group
1(5.6%)
Every event I go to
1(5.6%)
A couple times a year
9(50.0%)
I don't cook
6(33.3%)
When eating a feast do you
Like period food
9(50.0%)
Want "meat and potatoes"
0(0.0%)
Bring your own food "just in case"
1(5.6%)
Live by the song "the feast song" (pass the bread butter and cheese"
1(5.6%)
bring containers to take home the leftovers
1(5.6%)
Ticky box are cool
1(5.6%)
How soon after feast would you like to read a review for a feast you worked on
Within 24 hours
2(12.5%)
Within 48 hours
8(50.0%)
After a week
5(31.2%)
Just post it privately, I don't want to know
0(0.0%)
Would you be willing to post a detailed review for a feast someone you knew (say me) made?
In a heartbeat - the good and bad
13(76.5%)
I'd think about it but probably not
4(23.5%)
Eventually but I'd cut out all the bad stuff
0(0.0%)
Never!
0(0.0%)
Preference question. You have a really cool dish that you want to serve, but not enough to go around. What do you do?
Special High Table Dish (and if enough, the kitchen staff)
11(61.1%)
Feed as many as you can then “sorry about your luck”
1(5.6%)
Leave it off the feast
5(27.8%)
Comments
My one and only feast experience was webbed here:
http://www.housemorien.org/amodestbanquet.htm
So don't feel bad; even the pros muff it pretty badly sometimes, too! (From later questions, I'm pretty sure they didn't want commuter trips, but, hey, I answered what they asked -- and so will everyone else in the Boston area who takes the purple line!)
I do period food, or food that is very very peri-oid...I'll do rice in milk and vegetable broth instead of meat broth so as to make it more accessible to the vegetarians. I think this is a period trick, but I can't find positive evidence of it on this particular recipe. Depending on how things go I might volunteer to cook for our next archery event, though.
I'd love to get reviews of the feasts I do, personally.
I tend not to do really elaborate things for head table. Partly because as head cook I don't need the worry and fuss. I did at the last feast I was at, as the menu was set before we discovered that the new king and queen did NOT eat fish. So I did ham, cheese, and egg rissoles. (Le Menagier, "Rissoles for a meat day"). That I viewed not so much as a special dish than as a gap-filler, and a chance for me to test-cook the dish before I put it into A&S.
I do enjoy cooking at home, but cooking for a large crowd is a bit too much like my late mother's career in the school kitchen. I also miss period food when I'm at Pennsic.
Elsewhere I've seen the leftovers issue handled by a table that's out of the way of the path of the servers to the kitchen to hold extras. Tables that are done with a dish can sit their stuff there and people who want to see if there's more of something look for it there.
I don't see the point in a review that is purely positive unless everything really was completely positive.
And if there's a dish I really want to try and there's no A&S competition to enter it in, I might donate it to a silent auction the day of the event. But then I hail from a group whose laws state there shall be no high table at events.