Convene Catering

Convene is a meeting space and event venue with several locations in the US, including in San Francisco, where I recently attended a one day event.  The space was well laid out with flexible room sizes, open spaces for breakouts, etc.  It is an attractive, modern space, and the event staff seemed quite professional.

But we are here to talk about the food and drink of course.  Our conference hosts selected a package that included all day snacks/drinks, a morning and afternoon treat, a lunch buffet, and evening reception.  The quality was above average, although I don't know the cost, it clearly was a nice offering with some more unique options than standard conference fare.

Snacks

Snacks.

Throughout the entire day, we had access to multiple snack shelves, with different variety swapped out every time they refilled (which they were constantly doing).  Most items were gluten-free.  Throughout the day there were many kinds of chips (some really interesting flavors too, like pimento cheese), veggie crisps, dried fruits, nut & fruit trail mixes, flavored dried fava beans, breakfast bars, cookies, gummy candy (Swedish Fish and Sour Patch Kids), mints, and chocolates (Tony's).

There were also drink fridges with assorted flavors of sparkling LaCroix and standard sodas, along with water taps for still or sparkling water, and locally brewed coffee and tea bags.

Clear Labelling.

Whenever food items were served, items were very well marked with the dish name, description, and all the common allergens called out.

Lunch

The lunch spread really surprised me.  Yes, it did have the expected conference sandwiches, salad, and cookies, but 1) the salads were excellent, no basic mixed greens or ceasar here, 2) the main dish options were far above average, and 3) the non-cookie dessert was fantastic.  The only real negative points were that everything came pre-dressed and were really quite over-dressed, and some dishes were awkward to serve in the buffet format.

Roasted Hominy. VG GF.

"Roasted sweet corn, baby bell peppers, tomatoes, lima beans, pickled tomatillos, green onions, avocado-lime vinaigrette."

The name of this dish, "Roasted Hominy", threw me off a bit, as it wasn't called a salad (yet, clearly was) and there was barely any visible hominy.  The hominy was a garnish really.  Calling it something like "avocado lime Southwest salad" would have made more sense ... 

Anyway, sadly, I'm allergic to avocado, and this was already (very) dressed with the avocado based dressing.  The fresh crisp baby gems looked incredible though, and I was sad to miss out on what looked like a very good salad, full of unique ingredients.

Seasonal Panzanella. DF.

"Seasonal fruits & vegetables, crispy prosciutto, white balsamic vinaigrette."

I did get to enjoy the next salad offering, although it too was a bit mis-named.  A "panzanella" is usually bread based, and, although this had croutons, it really wasn't what I think of as a panzanella.  It also didn't actually have any seasonal fruits as described (although I guess the tomato counts?).  That said, it was delicious (although it too was over dressed, it was already coated and tossed, AND there was extra dressing on top).

I *loved* this though.  The baby kale was a hearty base, the roasted vegetables (I found several types of squash in mine) were summer appropriate, the pickled red onions gave some tartness, the tomatoes were crazypants good - sooo flavorful and juicy and just a true celebration of summer, and the crispy prosciutto was totally addicting - crispy indeed, salty, and phenomenal.  I wish it didn't have all that dressing, but, it was really, really good.  I went back for seconds, and nearly for thirds!

****+.

Italian Hero.

"Prosciutto cotto, soppresada, fennel salami, aged provolone, calabrian chilli pepper aioli, giardiniera relish."

Next came your requisite sandwiches, for those who think lunch = sandwiches.  The Italian hero was on crisp baguette, loaded with meats, and actually held together well with the pick.  I appreciated that they were cut into small portions so I could try it (mostly out of curiosity, but also, I do love good luncheon meats!).

The baguette was pretty lackluster, soft not crusty, not particularly flavorful.  The meats and cheese were fairly average generic decent deli meats, the spreads were flavorful.  Basically, a reasonable Italian sub, just the bread was a bit lackluster.  *** fillings, ** bread, so **+ overall.

Sicilian Eggplant Relish Tartine. VG.

"Sautéed eggplant, bell peppers, tomato, golden raisins, chilli."

The other sandwich-adjacent offering was an open faced tartine.  It came on a very soft and flavorful focaccia, that soaked up a lot of juices from the topping.  Given how "meh" the baguette was, this shocked me, but I really liked this bread base.  ****+.

The topping was odd but flavorful.  I liked everything besides the bell peppers.  It did go really well with the focaccia.  ***.

Overall, ***+ and shockingly tasty, but I will ding the catering company one point here for not being practical to pick up with the serving tongs.  Every single guest struggled, lost the toppings, etc.  The soft bread base, the large size, and the tongs just didn't work at all.

Buddah Bowl. GF VG.

"Quinoa, pickled red cabbage, caramelized red onions, shaved carrots, sautéed red peppers, spiced sweet potatoes, sautéed spinach, sunbutter dressing."

On the heartier side, and to satisfy all the vegans and gluten-free diners, we had a buddah bowl.  You can't see it, but the base of this is just plain quinoa.  It came with different sections of toppings, including the pickled red cabbage, the carrots, the red onion, the spiced potatoes, etc.  Under that was a layer of spinach (that didn't seem sautéed as advertised, it was raw).  Again too much dressing globed on top as well.  The flowers were an attractive touch. 

I wanted to like this, but the flavors were mostly off for me.  I really didn't care for the sunbutter dressing that was all over it, and the spicing on the potatoes (Morrocan-ish?) was aggressive and not really the flavor profile I gravitate towards.  There was also tons of red peppers, and I don't care for red peppers.  So alas, not much here I was interested in. *+.

Another slight catering logistics issue, as this was not very practical for large format like this though, as the first people just got all the toppings, and it kept being left with just quinoa.

Salmon "Burnt Ends". GF.

"Caramelized BBQ salmon with roasted corn & zucchini succotash."

And finally, the other main dish, shockingly NOT chicken, was salmon.  Big filets of salmon, roasted with a bbq rub.  Fairly tender and flakey, cooked well done, but not dried out if that makes sense.  I like my salmon mid-rare, but this was good for that style of done-ness.  ***.

It was served over a summer veggie succotash.  The zucchini was cubed much the same size as the corn, the asparagus was very small pieces, and the other summer squash was larger hunks, making it fairly interesting to eat due to all the sizes.  All were soft but not mushy, fairly flavorful.  ***.  

Cherry Bomb Cookies. V.

On the dessert front, of course they had a basic cookie option.  At least it wasn't just generic chocolate chip?

The cookie was very average.  Lightly soft, lightly chewy.  Not particularly buttery, sugary, nor decadent.  I wasn't into the tart chewy cherries throughout.  Chocolate chips standard.  Good distribution of mix-ins. ***.

Dark Chocolate Tartlets. V.

But they also had these tartlets.

I often put tartlets down, as the tart shells usually aren't very good and I prefer larger format desserts, but these were very, very good.  The tart shell itself wasn't particularly interesting, just sweet and a bit soft, but the filling was fantastic.  Super rich, super dark chocolate.  The garnish of additional dark chocolate shavings worked well.  I really enjoyed this, although I wish it had a little whipped cream or fresh berries to balance it out.

****.

Break

For afternoon break, we had a simple offering, just a mocktail shot and donut.  I missed the morning break, so I'm not sure what they had then.

Passion Fruit Spritz. V. GF.

"Passion fruit tea, basil simple syrup, micro basil."

This ... was just too sweet.  Passion fruit + simple syrup = sweet overload.  I didn't taste the basil.  But they looked pretty? *+.

Mixed Berry Beignet. V.

"Berry compote, yeast pastry."

"I know these!", was my first thought when I saw the treat.  While they labelled them as beignets, and most of my encounters with these list them as donuts, I was fairly certain these are the same filled donut-beignets that I've had at sooo many hotel breakfast buffets worldwide.  Do they taste like fresh donuts?  Absolutely not.  Does the outside layer sometimes sorta peel off?  Yes.  But do I generally really like them?  Also yes.  Although mixed berry is usually my last favorite of the flavors (Nutella, custard, cream, cookie butter, etc are much better).

And yes, they were exactly as I expected, and exactly as they are from any hotel breakfast buffet.  Fluffy, lightly sweet yeasted dough.  Decent amount of smooth berry compote filling inside. The filling has no seeds, and is no clear specific berry, and isn't really like regular jelly donut filling either, but it is fruity and sweet and definitely works.  

*** in the grand scheme of things, but ***+ for how tasty they are, despite being a frozen mass produced little donut ball. 

Reception

To close the event, we had a very minimal reception.  I assume Convene has much more extensive packages, but our hosts did not select one.

Beer.

Three different beers were available, all in cans.  No cider, although one was a fruity summer beer.

Wine.

The wine lineup was one each of rose, white, and red.  All reasonable wines, in the $20-30 bottle range.

I went for the red, Benton-Lane Pinot Noir.  It was a touch acidic, but not bad overall.  ***.

Chips & Salsa.

The chips and salsa were both slightly above average.  Nice thick (but not chunky) salsa, good flavor.  Chips well salted. ***+.

I didn't get a photo of the root veggie chips, two kinds, purple and orange, that were absolutely fantastic.  Salty, greasy, flavorful, and totally hit the spot.  ****.