Siraess, or "river food", is a tradition of serving food originating with the Sidhe houses of Avareen and Narevoreen. For this purpose, the hosts and their guests would sit down next to a small, slow-moving rivulet (made to look natural, but in fact arranged carefully for this very purpose), with the higher-ranking people sitting further upstream. Servants would then prepare the dishes and put them on plates in the form of small ships, which would then be released on the rivulet even further upstream, out of sight. This way, the dishes would float past the party, and all the guests could pick and choose which food to take (with those further upstream getting first pickings). Servants would either collect all the food that hasn't been eaten further downstream, or the general population could take whatever was left.
A more compact variant was developed later, where an artificial stream was enchanted to flow in a circular pattern. This way, if a certain dish wasn't taken by one of the guests during its first "pass", it would simply come around later. As the number of elven expatriates in human cities continues to grow, this has become a popular (if very expensive and upscale) style of restaurant - most of the Flannish Cities have at least one such restaurant, usually frequented by Patricians wanting to experience "elven cuisine".