What food do you want to eat at DrupalCon Paris?...

Hi Cary,

Thanks for your comments. Please don't be scared to edit the wiki and change what you see. Or, at least add comments directly in the wiki next to the issues you have issue with.

I think that most folks want good, tasty food that isn't the same every day.

Agreed. The whole point about this wiki is that you tell us exactly what food is going to make you happy. Because everyone has a different idea of "tasty food". The more you can say what you do want the more likely you are to get it.

I personally do not plan on becoming a vegan on my trip to Paris.

No one is suggesting that you do anything that you don't want to do. We are only going on feedback from DC attendees. Where does it say that everyone must eat vegan? So, please say exactly what you want. We need to hand over a detailed plan to the caterers - that means down to ingredients.

With no disrespect to anyone's dietary preferences and restrictions, I think that a lot of us would be happy with sandwiches made with good ingredients and really good bread, accompanied by some sort of salad, something crunchy, and a cookie or pastry.

Sorry, the "a lot of us" voted in the polls and said they preferred a buffet. We're are just going with majority feedback here. The buffet people are in the majority it seems.

So, please be more specific with the actual type of foods and also whack it in the wiki.

In DC, the idea was fine, but the execution was not so great,

Why exactly wasn't it great? I wasn't there and don't know the issues. Perhaps put them under the "Logistics" heading in the wiki. Cheers!

and it wasn't helped by the fact that they served the same stuff every day. Szeged and Barcelona also fell into the repetition trap.

It could be down to cost I'm afraid. Having variable stuff each day could whack the price up. However, please give us an idea of what you'd like to see as the daily rotation - yeah, I mean, give us a sample menu for each. That would really help grasp what you're describing.

I am not a fan of help-yourself dining at conferences and I would avoid soups, stews and anything that is hard to clean up.

Good point about the soups/stews. They could get messy. But then Szeged salad were pretty sloppy and that worked out OK. So, watery stuff is questioned as possible too much potential mess. But sloppy stuff is OK, I reckon.

You will be feeding a lot of folks in a short time, so have everything ready so that they can get their food, find a spot and eat.

That's a good "Logistics" point, yes? Perhaps rather than having a big long table - like at Szeged - we have say 4 different table sets where people can get the same food. That would help with the bottleneck of queuing.

I also suggest that you stick to things that you are pretty sure will be accepted by (almost) everyone.

That's what we're trying to find out. We're only going on feedback.

You might get some strong opinions here

I hope so. That's what we want.

and find that they are not shared by the folks who just want simple, good food and didn't speak up (but, believe me, they will if you try to make them to eat mackerel and brown rice every day).

Why are they not speaking up? Or are they speaking up? We can only go with the feedback we're getting.

Best if people just put down exactly the foods they want to have and we'll take it from there. So, please don't miss out on this opportunity to have the food the way you want to eat it!

You should definitely try to get an idea of how many vegetarians you have.

Yes, I'm not a coder so if you are please help the website people implement that.

When folks check in, make them commit to veg or non-veg, so the carnivores don't devour the veg food on mackerel day .

Good idea.

Do you want red meat? Or will fish and chicken do?

The best thing to do is highlight these issues to the attendees NOW and try and get feedback before we finalise with the caterers. Please spread the word.

Thanks for your feedback!

Cheers Daniel

I respectfully disagree.

A wiki page is fine and I won't delete it again, but I think that this calls for a conversation. I think that conversation should start with Isabell's original post.

I don't disagree that buffets might be preferred. My issue is logistics. Buffets are slower and less predictable than box lunches. If you can identify the number of vegetarians up front, you can be very efficient in matching the amount of food to the number of attendees. This leads to better value (or higher caterer profits) from our budget.

We want good food, but we are also going to DrupalCon, not LunchCon -- although that does have a certain appeal. We have an advantage in Paris that we are apparently in one of the few venues in the world that is not locked into an exclusive catering contract, so we can select a caterer who wil actually cater to our needs.

I personally will eat whatever is presented. My hope is that we can raise the overall level of satisfaction with the food from its fairly low level. Leaving Boston out of the mix, food has been a bigger cost at each successive DrupalCon and satisfaction has declined. In DC, there was no choice, we had to pay over $20 per person for the sandwiches, which pretty much tasted like they had come from a long rest in a vending machine. Other options would have been through the roof.

Take into account allergy to FAVA BEANS (see why)

It seems the caterer wants to present us with bite sized bits of food that we can eat on the go or load on to a plate but which does not require cutlery. As we'll all be carrying our computers with us - it seems. So, I've updated the wiki with a proposed menu taking into account all of the feedback so far.

I've left out soups, stews and all foods that can't be eaten with fingers with the exception of dips that can be eaten with salad sticks (carrots, cucumber and celery).

Sandwiches are back in but I'm pushing for potatoes as an alternative carbohydrates to bread/wheat. Without cutlery rice would only be available in the form of stuff vine leaves.

I recommend having just fruit for desert and not going heavily sugared treats. Because my remit is to provide healthy food.

It's a shame we're not going down the cutlery route as that does restrict our choices in terms of meat/fish in a thick stew or sauce. Now meat/fish will just be on sticks or in sandwiches, I guess.

Thoughts?...

Cheers Daniel

Please be bold and edit the What food do you want to eat at DrupalCon Paris?... wiki page directly if you feel you can add to the menu or logistics so we can hand this to the caterers in the next few days.