What is the best food to serve at a picnic?
Idea
It’s picnic season. You’ll need food that’s portable, shareable, easy to eat, and incredibly delicious.
It’s quiche season! Sorry, I meant picnic season. You’ll need food that’s portable, shareable, easy to eat, and incredibly delicious. It’s something you can cook or buy in the morning and take to the park, the beach, the golf course, or the mountaintop in the afternoon. I told you it was winter.
Quiche Lorraine is my go-to picnic dish because it has it all: the smooth, light, fluffy texture of scrambled eggs and cream, the tang of smoky bacon, a crisp pastry crust, and a nutty gruyere flavor. It tastes as good when eaten on the banks of the Seine in Paris, on a train trudging through the Swiss Alps, or on a park bench along the Yarra River.
More importantly, eating in public places is not dirty; It doesn’t fall apart like a Vietnamese banh mi roll or leak shirt-staining juices like Nicoise pan bagnat. It doesn’t dry out to a loofah-like texture, as sandwiches can over time, or need to be refrigerated for fear it will kill you if hot, as oysters can over time.
As everyone knows picnics are weather-dependent events, it’s reassuring to know that you can eat quiche with your fingers or off a plate while sitting or standing, under a tree if necessary, while thunder and lightning roll.
Now that we are approaching the peak of picnic season (neither too cold to consider dining outdoors nor too hot despite the occasional lightning strike), we should remind ourselves of the wisdom gained in previous years.
Leave yourself alone and decide not to cook or barbecue. Both strategies require moving heavy items across difficult terrain (including parking lots, dunes, sports fields). You don’t have three burly maids and a maid to carry everything to your preferred spot under that tree over there.
Among the foods that can be prepared successfully in the future, consider:
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Terry Durack has been reviewing restaurants and searching for new dining experiences for thirty years. The author of six books and a former reviewer for London’s Independent on Sunday and the Sydney Morning Herald, Terry has twice been named the UK’s Glenfiddich Restaurant Reviewer of the Year and World Food Media’s Best Restaurant Reviewer. Australian-born and based in Sydney, he brings a unique perspective on the global food scene to his travel writing.
