"Catering" recommendations for kid birthday party in Friendship Heights?

[Anonymous]

We are having DD's party at a space in Friendship Heights, and I wanted to grab a couple deli trays for the food. Nothing crazy, just your basic fruit / cheese / veggies etc. I am going to have a houseful of family and no time to prep myself on top of everything else, so I figured I would get something from Whole Foods and call it a day. However, a "large" cheese tray that feeds 15 is $70!! That seems nuts to me. Anyone have another recommendation that would be nearby and easy?

[Anonymous]

Bethesda bagels on river road.

[Anonymous]

I can tell you that the large cheese tray is huge! they give an extra tray with crackers to go with it and it has fruit in the middle. So in reality, it would probably feed more than 15.

What about some chicken, hummus and pitas from nando peri peri?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Bethesda bagels on river road.

That's actually called Georgetown Bagelry on River Road, but yes, I would recommend them over Bethesda Bagels in downtown Bethesda.

I recently had a party and considered doing fruit and veggie trays from whole foods or giant but couldn't stomach the thought of spending that much for basic stuff like that. I ended up doing it myself and it took like 10 minutes to assemble a couple trays the day before and I only needed to take them out of the fridge on the day of the event. For veggie tray, just buy a bag of broccoli florets (one of the ready to steam bags, but its fresh broccoli that's just already cut up for you), a bag of mini carrots, a bag of celery hearts (so you just cut off the ends and chop in half), and a thing of cherry tomatoes...scoop some helluva good ranch dip into a bowl and assemble the veggies around it. For the fruit tray, buy a few containers of whatever berries are on sale (raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, strawberries) plus some grapes...all you need to do is rinse them off and dump them on a tray. Cheese takes slightly longer if you have to cut up blocks of cheese but still super easy. You can even buy the pre-sliced cracker barrel cheeses, or roll-up deli slices of different cheeses, then scatter some water crackers and club crackers.

[Anonymous]

Costco?

[Anonymous]

I'm not sure if there is one near friendship heights but Harris Teeter does an excellent job on platters and they are much cheaper than Giant. Their fruit platter is awesome and like half the price! You can order online at both Giant and Harris Teeter so you can compare prices yourself.

[Anonymous]

Panera? Cosi?

[Anonymous]

Giant Food does an awesome job. We use them all the time.