Nibbles to be passed around to guests at an Art Gallery opening  - tiny bocconcini sandwiched between cherry tomatoes, "drizzled" with basil oil.
Nice, but these are not canapés.
What do we call small, light morsels of food passed around to standing guests or to friends not yet seated, to entertain them possibly, while waiting for others to arrive?

Pre-dinner nibbles, appetisers, pre-prandial snacks, hors d'oeuvres, amuse-gueules, amuse-bouches, canapés?

In French, un canapé is a couch or a sofa, so a canapé acts as a little "couch" for a morsel of tasty food on which to nestle.  It could be a round of rye bread topped with smoked salmon & sour cream, it could be a sliver of pineapple topped with spiced pork, it could even be a humble Jatz cracker with cheddar and a pickle.

We were always trying to find different "canapés" to build on - a round of cucumber, a small square of crisped polenta, a finger of toast, a blini, a ball of pressed rice - all to inspire us to match a topping.
​
So baby bocconcini and cherry tomatoes are nice, but they're not canapés. Canapés are pre-prandial snacks/appetisers but not all pre-prandial snacks are canapés.
​

L. to R.
Cocktail glass - prawns, mango, mayonnaise, whatever & perhaps with a prawn off the side. ("Vintage" dressing - equal parts ice-cream & tomato sauce.)
Ethnic - deep and moody, comfort food, any garnish will be "old school". (Jasmin restaurant.)
Stacked - layered, tall as possible (salad helps), generally circular, must be "deconstructed" to eat.

L. to R
Meat and Three Veg - homely, ticking off the five food groups.
Rustic - delicious gnocchi and mushrooms, artfully "plonked" on an earthy plate. (André's Cucina)
Verrine - Food piled in a glass (or even more on trend, in a preserving jar).

L. to R.
Zen - conscious simplicity and perfection - C.M.'s Peach Melba 
Take-away - when the going gets tough. (Just a personal social experiment, of course.)
Geometric - Raspberries and Pistachio - Paris, Le Grand Véfour, my spiritual home.

L. to R.
Linear - a string of ingredients rather than a recipe!
Scatterings - bits of this and that, arranged...
Spoons - for tiny morsels of deliciousness - cocktail food, pre-prandial nibbles, canapés. (Never anywhere to put the empties.)

Do you remember any others?  
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Salamanca Market - Hobart.
Inspiring - but were these vegetables arranged, displayed or "curated"?

In these troubles times, hate is too strong a sword to use flippantly. But sitting around, as you do, we allowed ourselves to mull over clichéd and tired thinking.  
Ah - what expressions we use to make  our dreary lives more interesting?
We’d be really happy to see less of these in the area of food and hospitality.  Indulge us here, share with us.

The worst, the top - the one that got us screaming...
Celebrity Chef (CC), followed by Chef Extraordinaire (CE).
I think a CE is lower than a CC.  Perhaps a CE can give an opinion but is not as often on TV. I don’t know. Definition?

Also ghastly...
Cooking up a storm – as someone who believes in calm, quiet application, this sounds like a messy bench top and dishevelled “mis en place”.
Secrets - “CC Mavis deLornay shares her secrets for the perfect cheese platter” or  “This time, we’ll uncover the secret behind the perfect meat loaf.” Something easy made very mysterious? Whatever, there are no secrets, just discovery.

These expressions make us cringe... 
Crusty bread - there's no need for an adjective before each and every noun.
Honest food–  As CE Frank Mc. says "I hate it when my risotto lies to me."
Infused – mystical flavouring.  Frank rocks the boat by "invading" his lamb with cumin.  Love it. (And the flavour rocks.)
Healthy – any funny new vegetable, preferably difficult to love
Detox – Not physically possible.  Just going without to assuage Catholic guilt.
Clean eating / authentic / integrity - please explain.
Local  - How close is local?
Super foods – anything dark green, very bitter and hard to source.
Curated meats – a butcher now does more than just trim meat.  
Infant carrots - larger than baby, smaller than adolescents.  Adults are probably used for juicing. The big old codgers, I guess, are for  horses.
 
A cooking demonstration recently...
 “I’ve made it gluten free so it’s really good”.  NO, it's good for ceoliacs and the non-coeliac gluten intolerants, but it's not necessarily better for most people, especially not with the bloody sugar you've added!
 
"Recent studies show" proves it’s correct.
"Laboratory tests prove"  contradicts whatever “recent studies show”.

Think before you say this...
To die for / Simply divine - cute the first time we heard it. No longer.

"Don’t go to any trouble" - Passive aggressive. 

"You must come to dinner" - Oh, so it's my fault I haven't turned up or are you indicating that you are lazy and haven't got around to it but mean to do it and in the mean time, you're covering for yourself, or thinking about it but want to look generous and gregarious?  Or you just don't want to see me?

"Can I help?" as you walk in the door. If I needed that much help I wouldn't have asked you all over for my larks' tongue pâté en croûte, my roasted deboned pheasant galantine with turned baby vegetables and my new season chestnut and rum bavarois.  (Could I send you down to the dressing room to iron a few napkins? I'll bring down a glass of bubbles.) 

But especially for us secret, wanna-be or fledgling CCs and CEs, what gets us pulling out our hair (and hurts most)...
"I could never cook for you." - We're all allowed to be good at something.  You have a better degree than I have, you have read Proust in French, Russian and English,  you can sight read music, you have more jokes up your sleeve than I have, you have climbed Machu Pichu. Allow me to do this one thing without recrimination.

Add some of yours... (or just click like 👍🏼).