Wedding Blog

After visiting with our rental company and florist on Saturday morning, the three of us ladies headed up the road to Cimmaron Cafe & Catering to taste a sample wedding menu.

We really wanted our catering to be provided by Polebridge via their saloon kitchen, but a series of rather bumpy miscommunications and delays with Polebridge staff and residents led me to decide that it was probably wise to have a backup caterer on standby… at least until we were sure that Polebridge could provide what we needed. This meant potentially forfeiting a $200 deposit, but given how essential food is for a wedding reception and how (sadly) small $200 is compared to a total catering bill, it was worth the cost.

I was really excited to meet with Cimmaron. They’d seemed incredibly receptive to all of our ideas, including using local and organic ingredients where possible. They were also very accommodating and allowed my mom to take part in the tasting even though they were only expecting two of us.

The first item on the menu was a sampling of appetizers: crostini with olive tapenade or caprese toppings. We also planned a self-serve course of cheese, fruit, and crackers.

Following appetizers during cocktail hour (during which we are planning signature cocktails from homemade infusions - more on this later), we would serve a plated salad with feta, strawberries, huckleberries (blackberries here since hucks are out of season), and spinach:

Following the salad course, we plan to offer a buffet with three options: fish, red meat, and vegetarian. My original thought was to offer Montana trout and Montana beef or bison and a vegetable pilaf or mushroom dish. Cimmaron explained that wild Alaskan salmon would be fresher, more flavorful, more easily available, and more cost effective. I can’t really argue with that since we’re wild salmon fiends and it will give our guests a taste of the Northwest as well. We tasted a Sockeye fillet with white wine, butter, and caper sauce with two choices of sides: grilled red potatoes and mixed grilled vegetables.

The beef we sampled was not Montana beef, but rather a hormone-free tri-tip steak from Idaho. It was marinated in a savory mushroom wine sauce and was so tasty I forgot about my disappointment that it wasn’t local.

Finally, we sampled a grilled portabella mushroom topped with minced spinach, roasted red pepper, and cheeses. It’s not the prettiest of dishes (I think it looks kind of like someone yakked on the plate), but it sure was delicious!

I’m happy that our food will not be elegant or impressively presented with garnishes and curlicues. (I think gourmet cooking would be strangely out of place where we’re getting married.) But our tasting did meet our requirements for cuisine that is well-prepared, flavorful, honest, and satisfying.

We chose barbecued foods for the ease with which they can be prepared in a remote location and the summer nostalgia of the grill.

It took me a while to decide between a plated service and buffet service. The price point of buffet was appealing, while the effortless elegance of plated service appealed to my aesthetic sensibilities. Ultimately, I figured that our guests would probably like to be able to sample a little of each dish and choose their own quantities, so we decided to opt for a plated salad course and a buffet entrée.

Which did you choose, and why?

Overall, I was very impressed with the professionalism and flexibility of Cimmaron’s staff. They anticipated our needs and were willing to work with us to develop courses that worked well with our venue (for example, suggesting French press coffee service instead of coffeemakers to accommodate the power drain on our generators). Based on our experience with Cimmaron versus the cooking arm of Polebridge, we left for my next appointment convinced that we would be working with Cimmaron on our wedding day.