Grazing Tables in Ottawa

Six categories, in balance

A grazing table stays interesting because it covers six jobs at once. Hold all six and the display survives a seasonal ingredient swap without losing its shape, because each swap happens inside a category. The item list is composed for your event and arrives in writing with the quote; the categories below are the frame it is composed inside.

• Rich — a hard cheese, a soft cheese, a blue if the guest list will eat one, plus cured meat and one spreadable
• Fresh — seasonal fruit, cut vegetables, whole herbs used as part of the layout
• Salty — marinated olives, cornichons, roasted peppers, pickled vegetables
• Crunchy — seeded crackers, crostini, breadsticks, toasted or candied nuts
• Substantial — tartlets, mini sandwiches, filled pastry, arancini, skewers
• Sweet — small pastries, chocolate, dried and fresh fruit to finish

How much table length a guest count needs

Two different measurements decide the surface. The first is volume. A 1.8 m trestle — the standard six-foot folding table — carries a grazing display for roughly twenty to twenty-five guests at appetiser level, a 2.4 m surface takes thirty to forty, and fifty guests want two 1.8 m tables joined or run as a pair. The second is access. Allow about 30 cm of open table edge for every guest standing at it in the same moment, which is why a table pushed against a wall queues twice as long as one you can walk around. Depth of 75 to 90 cm gives the layering somewhere to go on a table guests can reach from both long sides. Against a wall, keep it under about 70 cm, because the back row of a one-sided table goes untouched.

• 1.8 m surface — twenty to twenty-five guests, appetiser level
• 2.4 m surface — thirty to forty guests
• Fifty guests — two 1.8 m tables, joined or run as a pair
• Both long sides open where the floor plan allows it

Grazing as the meal, and grazing before one

This single decision moves the quote more than any other. At appetiser level, plan five to seven pieces per guest across a ninety-minute window and let the rich and crunchy categories carry the display. Where the table replaces dinner, the substantial savoury category roughly doubles, the count goes to ten to fourteen pieces per guest, and the table needs a planned second wave held back in the van and released after the first hour. We settle which role the table is playing before the quote goes out, because the two answers are a long way apart.

Composed, layered, legible

Composition is what separates a grazing table from a number of boards pushed together. Risers under boards build height at the back, negative space gives the eye somewhere to rest, and colour is grouped into runs so a guest can identify five things in the first second and find the sixth by looking. Cured meat is folded and stood up so it holds shape for three hours. Cut fruit goes down last, because it weeps within the hour and takes the crackers next to it with it.

Seasonal composition, Ottawa specifics

A January table and a July table are different objects. Through the Ottawa winter the fresh category leans on citrus, pears, dried and preserved fruit and roasted root vegetables, with aged and washed-rind cheeses doing the heavy lifting and warm spice in the sweets. From late June the balance flips: field strawberries, then peaches and plums, tomatoes, cucumber, soft fresh cheeses and herbs cut the same morning. A February brief asking for a berry-heavy display gets a straight conversation about what is going to arrive looking like the photograph.

How long a grazing table holds

A table holding dairy and cured meat comes down after about two hours at room temperature, and after about one hour once the space is warmer than about 32 °C. A warm room or direct sun shortens it further. Events longer than that are quoted with replenishment built in, so the surface still reads full at the ninety-minute mark when most photographs get taken. Cut fruit, dressed leaves and anything with a soft centre go out in the second wave for exactly this reason.

The build, on site, in your space

A layered display cannot survive a car journey, so it is composed where it will be eaten. Setup runs roughly 45 to 90 minutes depending on length, which means the arrival time is agreed to land before your guests. That build is what the $45 line for delivery and styling pays for inside 25 km, and a longer drive is priced for the address before you book.

• On-site build of 45 to 90 minutes, timed to finish before doors
• Boards, risers, linens and serving pieces arrive with the food
• Pack-down the same evening, or collection the next morning by arrangement
• Leftovers boxed and left with the host before we go

What the host takes care of

A short list, and it is worth settling early because each item changes the build time.

• The table surface itself, with its length and depth sent to us in advance
• Where the table stands, and a clear approach for carrying boxes to it
• Somewhere to park for the loading window, which matters most downtown
• Guest plates, napkins and cutlery, confirmed at quote stage so nothing gets bought twice
• A bin, and fridge space where the event runs long enough to need a second wave chilled

Charcuterie boards, and when a table is the better answer

A charcuterie board is one platter built around cured meat, cheese and the things eaten with them, composed on a single surface and carried in whole. It serves roughly six to twelve people as an appetiser, and about half that where it is the only food in the room, so a substantial savoury item goes beside it. The same six categories apply, compressed into one composition, with height built from the board and the food itself, and a board travels intact, so it can be dropped and left where a full table cannot. The money points the same way as the looks: the $600 event minimum applies to the booking whichever format it is, and at $42 per guest it stops binding at 15 guests, so a group in the low teens gets a whole styled table for the number a board would have cost anyway. Where the step up earns itself:

• Under about twelve guests — a generous board, because a thin display stretched over six feet reads as under-filled
• Twelve to eighteen — we ask what the surface is before recommending either
• Twenty-five and up — a single board looks under-scaled however well it is built

Individual graze cups

Cups answer two situations. Seated rooms, where a shared surface is out of reach for half the guests. And events where people would prefer their own portion on a shared afternoon. Each cup is a complete small spread across the categories, and dietary variants are made as their own batch and labelled individually so the right cup reaches the right guest.

Closed boxes that leave the building

Boxes are the format for client gifting, thank-yous, welcome drops for out-of-town guests and anything travelling by car. They are built to arrive intact and to be opened by somebody who was nowhere near the planning conversation, so the contents card carries more of the load than a table card would.

• Client gifting and thank-yous, quoted with your enquiry
• Welcome boxes for guests arriving from out of town
• Seated meetings where a shared surface is impractical
• Dietary variants made as separate batches and labelled individually

Labelling a surface people eat from directly

A shared table makes cross-contact a planning question with real weight, because every guest reaches into the same landscape. Each item carries a card with its plain name first and its dietary markers second, and a serious allergy among the guests is talked through, for the whole surface, before the date is booked. Our dietary catering page sets out where that promise stops.

What a grazing table costs

The number follows the job the table does. At appetiser level, ninety minutes before a dinner somewhere else, a grazing table sits at $42 per guest, the bottom of the $42–$65 per guest range; built as the meal, with the substantial savoury category doubled, it climbs towards $65, which puts thirty guests at $1,950 plus delivery. From 15 guests up the per-guest price decides the total, and below that the $600 event minimum does, which is when a board is often the better buy.

Where we are today

OH! is a new Ottawa business. Anastasiia Stepanenko started it this summer with her mother, Nataliia; the family, from Kharkiv, settled in Ottawa in 2023. The first private grazing tables are still ahead, so there are no reviews to show yet, and the grazing-table pictures on this page are generated for the brand. Real OH! photographs now document the UAFest 2026 stand and its preparation; they are published as festival evidence, never presented as private grazing-table work. Before you commit you get a written menu for your date, a quote that separates food, styling and delivery, and the terms in writing. Where Anastasiia has already fed a crowd:

• June 2025: Anastasiia and her Cookiddoo studio catered the Ukrainian Business Network evening at Invest Ottawa
• February 2026: over 50 litres of borscht and more than 200 pampushky for a charity community food fair in Perth
• 13 September 2026: OH!’s own food stand at UAFest in Carleton Place, with borscht, varenyky, nalysnyky and medovik