Foods Eaten While Standing Up, Rated
It's holiday party season and I have thoughts on the subject
Friends, it’s mid-December, and the holiday season is in full flush. The lights are up, the shopping’s (mostly) getting done, and I can’t go into a store without hearing a well-intentioned but completely off-base cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” on the radio.
It’s also holiday party season!
I have many thoughts on holiday parties.
First and foremost, if it’s a work event, I firmly believe that you should not have more than two drinks. If you don’t drink, that’s great! If you do drink, though, now is not the time to show off how good you are at it. If you value your job and your professional reputation, you should have two drinks, max, and the best way to achieve this is to drink something that does not taste good, like Negronis.
(I love Negronis, but they do not taste good. That’s part of the charm.)
So yeah, two drinks max, bad-tasting drinks, remember that a club soda with lime looks exactly the same as a vodka soda but will keep people from asking you if you need another, and absolutely under no circumstances should you go to a second location with your coworkers.
Also, you shouldn’t drink on an empty stomach!
There’s going to be food there, right? I hope there is. Of course, some foods are more suited to party environments than others. That is, some foods can be easily eaten while standing up, and others cannot.
Let’s review some of the foods you might end up eating while standing up, and how well- or poorly-suited they are to the situation.
Cheese Cubes
We’ll start out with the baseline, the true replacement player of party foods.
Would you eat an entire block of cheddar cheese at a party? No, of course not. That would be deranged. Would you each sixteen half-ounce cubes of cheese over the course of the evening if that’s the only food provided? Absolutely.
It’s better than drinking a glass of champagne on an empty stomach, and they’re not going to spill or cause a mess. When it all comes down to it, though, you simply could’ve stayed home and eaten cheese in front of an open fridge like a normal person.
Hummus and Other Dips
They look appealing, but they are fundamentally unsuited to the situation.
Go ahead, try to scoop some onto your plate. Whoops, you just got a little there. Looks like it’s stuck to the spoon. Might need to get a little more on the spoon and—nope, still stuck, just give it a OH GOD now you’ve got so much dip on your plate. You are not going to be able to consume that with the—wait, are there even crackers here? Why did they put out dip if there aren’t crackers?
[quietly concerned voice] am I supposed to dip the cheese cubes in the hummus?
Canapes
Okay, now we’re starting to get a little fancier. They’re bringing around little trays of stuff, and—what is that, is that lox and cream cheese on a slice of cucumber? How sophisticated! Why, it’s like we’re dining in the royal court!
[plucks one from the tray]
[awkwardly accepts a cocktail napkin]
[stoops to consume it in the way that you automatically do when eating a canape, it’s sort of like you hunch over but also cup your hand underneath and you kind of look like a giraffe being fed by a child at the zoo]
[mouth full of ham, it was actually ham] I feel fo elegant!
Meatballs
Okay, now we’re getting into the real all-stars of ambulatory appetizers. Cocktail meatballs? All they do is win. They’re delicious. They can be picked up with a toothpick and consumed in a single bite. Perhaps most importantly, they’re actually filling, and will serve as partial defense against that third Old-Fashioned THAT I TOLD YOU NOT TO HAVE WHY ARE YOU EVEN DRINKING THOSE THEY TASTE SO GOOD YOU FOOL
Of course, no All-Star is perfect. Juan Soto’s a below-average defensive outfielder, and the meatballs are definitely going to stain your new shirt. The only consolation here is that you were going to stain your shirt one way or another tonight, and at least you did it in service of a delicious meatball and not some 1.5-Wins Above Replacement canape.
Oh, speaking of, I shared a great recipe for cocktail meatballs recently!
(Always be closing.)
Skewered Meats
This one is tricky.
Skewered meats—and by that I mean your various satays, kebabs and grilled whathaveyous—are quite the appealing food in a vacuum. You’re not eating them in a vacuum, though, you’re eating them in the restaurant space your company rented out for the night.
How are you going to get this meat cleanly off this skewer while standing up and holding a plate? Go ahead. Prove it to me. It is a feat of biomechanics as unknowable as how The Three Seashells worked in Demolition Man (1993). The only way you could smoothly remove grilled meat from a skewer without the aid of a solid surface and two free hands is to stick it down your throat like a circus sword-swallower and draw it back clean, and I don’t recommend you do that without practicing at home first, or even if you have.
Without that party trick up your sleeve, you’ll just do like everyone else, and try to delicately gnaw at one side. All the meat on the other side will then fall onto the floor.
Shrimp
Cold cocktail shrimp is great in moderation. If cheese cubes are the replacement player and meatballs are the All-Star, then shrimp is the solid lineup-filling player. They’re not a standout, but they’re great to have around, a good clubhouse presence.
If you try to make the whole lineup out of them, you’re not winning a championship, though.
Oysters
I love oysters. They’re elegant, they’re delicious, they’re fun to eat.
There’s nothing not to like!
Also, if you are at a holiday party where they are freely serving oysters, you need to keep your resume updated, because this company is going to go under in spectacular fashion within the next six months.
Any Other Seafood
Why? Why are you serving me baked salmon while I am standing up? What am I supposed to do with this?
Sliders
Okay, I have to go on a little rant here.
We have completely lost the plot as a society when it comes to the concept of “sliders”.
The term originated in reference to White Castle’s signature steamed hamburgers, which are small, soft and flat—so easily consumed that one could somewhat-unsettlingly describe them as being able to “slide” down the eater’s throat.
Most sliders I encounter now, though, are monstrosities taller than they are wide, too-thick balls of meat stuffed into tiny houses of bread.
The only throat these are sliding down is that of a boa constrictor, and if there is a boa constrictor at your holiday party, you should stop drinking right now.
(You shouldn’t leave, though. You’ll want to see where the night goes, but be sober enough to not be the main character of it.)
Anyways, sliders are too big these days. I am not a crackpot.
A Brief Aside Regarding the So-Called “Walking Taco”
Okay, well now I’m going to go on a bigger rant.
I’m talking about holiday parties here, and I think it’s probably safe to say that you will not be served a Walking Taco at a holiday party, even the kind of holiday party than has oysters and large exotic snakes. That said, we’re talking about ambulatory foods here, and this is the one food most defined by its supposed portability—a portability that it does not possess.
I simply do not understand how a bag of chips full of chips and toppings is supposed to be more walkable than an actual taco, which you can in fact walk around with quite easily. Heck, depending on the fillings, you could probably walk into your holiday party with a couple of emergency tacos in your jacket pockets or purse.
(You know, just in case they’re serving cheese cubes and hummus.)
I digress. Back to the holiday party.
Soup
This is the bizarro counterpart to skewered meats—while the former seems ideal and isn’t, soup sounds like a terrible idea for a party, but it’s a low-key great performer. You just serve it in little shot glasses, and it can be consumed without any utensils at all!
I’ll go so far as to argue that this should be the default presentation of soup. We could take it as a pre-dinner aperitif.
[strolls into saloon, slaps bar like Doc Brown in Back To The Future III]
Gimme a bisque! Lobster!
Lasagna
In assembling this list, I have spent several days thinking about what the most difficult food to eat while standing up at a party would be, and I have settled on lasagna.
I have not, to the best of my recollection, ever been served lasagna at a holiday party. At the same time, I would not be the least bit surprised if it happened. It’s the kind of situation you should stay prepared for even if it’s rarely if ever going to come into use, like learning CPR or evacuating a high-rise building.
Have a standing-lasagna-consumption plan, and discuss it with your family.
Pigs in a Blanket
Finally, we have arrived at the true MVP of standing foods, the king of kings.
They can be eaten with a toothpick or simply with your fingers. They’re not going to fall apart on your or cause a mess. They’re delicious and they’re filling, containing all two of the major party-food food groups (pig and blanket). They will satisfy your cravings and keep that fourth Old Fashioned WAIT WHAT ARE YOU DOING GIVE ME THAT from getting into your bloodstream before you have a chance to say hi to the managing partner. They are the unsung hero of the cocktail party world.
Now, give me your keys, you’re walking home.
[hands you a taco] Take this with you.
—Scott Hines (@actioncookbook)
'Would you eat an entire block of cheddar cheese at a party? No, of course not. That would be deranged.'
Don't tell me what to do.
I was at a holiday party last week where they had lamb lollipops, and the way that a room full of lawyers descended on the tray like locusts is seared in my memory.
(Yes I fought my way to the front and had three)