Setting up a dinner buffet bar so guests can assemble their own meals is a great way to start off your next dinner party. Not only does it mean that everyone will have the chance to make exactly what they want, DIY dinner parties make it easy to accommodate guests with a variety of food restrictions. Read on for five buffet bar ideas.
• Customized Mini Burgers - Sliders and mini burgers are an idea choice for a DIY dinner buffet bar. Shape the burgers and give guests choices of topping, cheese and even a variety of buns. And how about offering lamb, veggie, and meatball sliders, too?
• Burrito Bar - Assembling burritos and tacos is a fun and easy entertaining idea. Prepare fillings like braised beef and shredded chicken and toppings like cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, salsa, sour cream, and beans. For a twist, try a Korean burrito bar with thin sliced marinated pork or beef, rice, kimchi, and pickled cucumber slices.
• Individual Pizzas - Make a few batches of thin crust pizza dough and let your guests shape their own customized pizzas. Offer a choice of sauce (marinara, pesto, BBQ), cheese, and toppings. Have the oven (or even the grill!) preheated and cook the pizzas as they are created.
• Pasta Bar - This idea is straight from my corner deli that has a pasta station set up with five different sauces, several different pasta varieties, and at least 10 choices of toppings. Cook the pasta just shy of al dente and have a saucepan ready to combine the sauces, pasta, and toppings like peas, prosciutto, shredded cheeses, and sun-dried tomatoes in one place.
• Sushi - With some preparation, making your own sushi is not as difficult as it seems. Prepare enough sushi rice, choose your fillings, and pick up some sushi-making essential tools. Guests can roll their own maki rolls and it's a project great even for kids!
Related: Something for Everyone: Ideas for Dinner Buffet Bars
(Images: Flickr user yogma licensed for use under Creative Commons)
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What a great idea! I think that this would bring about a more communal feel to any dinner party as well!
I love sushi parties! I had one last year myself, and I wrote a couple of tips that I with I had.
When we had a customized burger party, we actually had guests bring flavorings for the meat as well. We ended up with vindaloo burgers with caramelized onions or cucumber raita, miso burgers with summer squash, and various other burgers with cheese or spices mixed in. Sliders are a good size so people have room to try lots of the experiments.
Falafel bar - I make a big batch of the chowvegan falafel from this site, and hummus, tahini sauce, tzaziki, pitas, tabuleh, isreali salaed; put out lettuce, tomatoes, onions, hot sauce, and some feta, and let people build their own. Always fun, and easy.
baked potato bar...
My friends and I like to have gyoza dumpling parties. All you need: choices of veggie stuffing and pork stuffing, community tables for assembling the dumplings, and stations where they can be steamed or fried. So much fun!
I'm planning to do a hot dog buffet (with tofu pups for the vegs) this summer.
@konar - Love the falafel bar idea!
@tinyviolin - Sounds so fun! And tasty!
The Mexican bar is our summer staple (we have a couple of largish (20-30) work-related parties each summer). It always works out well--people love to make their own soft tacos, everything is labeled as to vegetarian/vegan and by level of heat so people can adapt to their food choices--and we always leave cilantro out of everything and have a couple of bowls of it chopped so that people can add or not as they see fit.
I like this idea. I come from a household that only ever did a sandwich bar, but I'd take any one of these over that any day.
in winter, raclette or fondue!
for a lighter fondue, try "fondue chinoise", where you cook bits of meat or veg in a fondue pot full of broth/stock/bouillion.