Catering Concepts and Terminology

Study Notes

Catering is an activity that serves food and/or beverages professionally, usually on a permanent or temporary basis, in establishments open to the public, with prices.
Catering establishments include restaurants, self-service restaurants, cafeterias, fast-food establishments, and freidurías.
Excluded from catering are vending machines, restaurants in hotels, and prepared meals for enterprises.
Catering evolves towards institutional food service or collective food service for events.

The instinct of eating to survive has gone through various anthropological and cultural stages, including the discovery of fire, cooking tools, and modification of flavor through salt or sweetening substances.
The passage of different cultures through the Iberian Peninsula has influenced the evolution of food.

Prehistoric: Food was based on hunting, spontaneous vegetables, first preserves, cereals, and livestock.
Phoenicians (5000-4000 BC): Introduced the alphabet, almadraba (tuna), salted garum (fish soup), winegrowing, and olive trees.
Romans (27 BC - 476 AD): Introduced oil, garlic, export of garum, cereals, legumes, vegetables, and wine.
Visigoths (409 A.D.– 720 A.D.): Focused on hunting, porridges, stews, cereals, barley, bread, vegetables.
Arabs (711 A.D. for 8 centuries): Introduced field modernization, balanced mixture of Mediterranean gastronomic characteristics, and Indian cuisine, with use of spices, rice, almonds, oranges, artichokes, and saffron.
Catholic Monarchs period: Introduced new foods from the New World, including potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, corn, cocoa, vanilla, and beans; and brought wheat, oil, sugar, bovine, sheep, pigs, chickens, bananas, coffee, etc. from the Old World.

Protocol appears as an evolution of archaic ritual to an ordination of human forms of relationship, serving as an instrument for the correct development of relationships in society.
Protocol and ceremonial are tools for organizing events and are directly related to eating habits and practices of each time and society.

Kingdoms and empires of antiquity had a sophisticated protocol often confused with religious liturgy.
In the Bible, there are references to banquets, with hosts and guests of honor, seating arrangements, and other protocol processes.
Persians organized public banquets with lots of wine served in golden cups and vessels.
Egyptians developed banquets where women were hosts, presiding with their husbands.
Romans were known for luxury, riches, and excesses in banquets and celebrations.
In the Middle Ages, banquets featured lots of food in noble celebrations.
The Renaissance brought refinements of Italian gastronomy, introducing instruments like the fork.