Capri Express caters Italian out of Burr Ridge, southwest of Chicago, and its catering menu runs on one unit: the pan. You pick how many pans and you pick which protein goes in them. Every other choice on the menu, the sauce, the pasta shape, the preparation, costs nothing. Price a real order against that menu and the pattern shows up fast. Splitting one dish into two is free.
Plan Capri Express catering with CaterAi
A family kitchen that sends its dining room food out by the pan
The Capri story starts in 1985, when the founder the family still calls Mama Capri opened the original Ristorante. A Burr Ridge dining room followed in 2002, built to put the same family recipes in a full-service room. Capri Express is the other half of that operation, the quick-service and catering side that runs pickup, delivery and office orders from its own kitchen on Burr Ridge Parkway.
Most restaurants bolt a catering menu onto a dining room and hand you a thinner version of the same list. Capri Express runs catering as its own operation, which shows up in what survives onto the catering menu. Veal, lobster tail and sea bass all made it, and they arrive in a pan sized for a conference table rather than on a plate. You can browse the Italian catering directory and find plenty of kitchens that cook at that level, and plenty that cater at that volume. The overlap is thin.
The pan is the only unit you have to think about
Every hot section of the catering menu prices two ways, half pan and full pan, and the serving spec gets reprinted at the top of each one. A half pan is built for six to eight people. A full pan is built for twelve to fifteen. Appetizers, salads, pasta, the chicken and veal entrees, the specialty dishes, the sides and the desserts all run on that same pair of numbers.
Sandwiches and panini go by the pan too, so even the handheld food comes out as a tray to serve from rather than a stack of boxes. A pan of veal cutlet panini is not a format most Italian caterers offer. If your team wants individual portions rather than a served line, our guide to boxed lunches against buffets covers when each one earns its keep, and the party tray guide covers sizing a cold spread.
A full pan never costs more than two halves
Compare each full pan against its own half pan, line by line down the menu. On nearly every line the full pan is priced at exactly twice the half. On the handful where it differs, the full pan comes in a little under twice. Not one line on the menu charges more than double.
Two half pans of two different dishes therefore land at the same place as one full pan of one dish. The half pans feed six to eight apiece, so together they cover twelve to sixteen, which brackets what the single full pan covers. You get a second dish, a second sauce and a hedge against the person who does not eat the first thing, and the arithmetic does not punish you for any of it.
So stop ordering full pans by default. For a room of twelve to fifteen, two half pans beat one full pan on every axis that matters to the people eating. Order the full pan when you want fifteen servings of one dish, which happens more often for lasagna at a board meeting than for anything else on the list.
Pasta is one price for any shape and any sauce
The pasta section prices as a single pan and then opens up. Pick a shape from a list that runs from spaghetti and penne through rigatoni, square noodles, baby shells, gnocchi, cavatelli, tortellini and ravioli. Pick a sauce from a list that runs vodka, olio, Romano, alfredo, quattro formaggio, diavolo, basilico, Bolognese and marinara. The pan costs the pan price whichever pair you land on.
Multiply those two lists and the combinations run into the dozens on a single line of the menu. That fixes the usual pasta problem in an office order, which is that the second pan looks like an upcharge and gets cut. Here you can put two pans on the table that share nothing, a cream sauce and a red sauce, a filled shape and a tube, at the price of two pans of the same thing. Teams that like the format enough to run it as a station will find the pasta bar setup useful.
A separate house-pasta section handles the dishes where the shape and the sauce are the point rather than a choice. Rigatoni in vodka sauce, baked ziti, gnocchi Romano, tortellini paesano with prosciutto and peas in alfredo, stuffed shells, arrabiata with prosciutto. Those come as themselves, at the same pan pricing.
The preparation is free, the protein sets the price
The chicken and veal section is where this menu departs from the norm. It does not list a dozen chicken dishes at a dozen prices. It lists chicken at one price, veal at one price, and then hands you the same long roster of preparations for either: Pompei, Marsala, Vesuvio, Piccata, Limone, Oreganato, Parmesan, Francese, cutlet, Saltimbocca, Genovese, Calabrisella and a few house names you will not find anywhere else, including one called Forget About It.
The marketplace listing tells the same story from the other direction. Chicken Parmesan, Chicken Limone, Chicken Francese, Chicken Vesuvio, Chicken Marsala, Chicken Pompeii, Chicken Piccata, Chicken Cutlet, Chicken Forget About It and Chicken Saltimbocca all sit at one identical price, each one spec’d to serve six. The veal entrees do the same at their own number.
That takes a whole category of second guessing off whoever places the order. You never have to weigh one preparation against another to protect a budget. Pick the protein tier, then pick the preparation the room will like.
The veal tier, and when it earns the step up
Veal runs a little under twice chicken, and the gap holds at both pan sizes. Picking between those two tiers is the one choice on this menu that moves the bill much.
Chicken carries the everyday orders. It handles the working lunch, the recurring team meal, the training day. Veal is what you reach for when the meal itself is doing work: a client appreciation dinner, a partner visit, an evening board session where the food is supposed to register. One veal pan alongside two chicken pans reads as generous without pricing the order like a veal order, and it is a cheaper way to raise the ceiling than moving the whole table up a tier. Seafood sits above both, and the sea bass runs at market, so treat that one as a conversation rather than a line item.
Where the doubling stops: the cold platters
The vegetable, cheese and antipasto platters do not follow the pan rule. They are sold small and large rather than half and full, and on two of the three the large steps up well under double. The hot pans and the cold platters therefore reward opposite behavior. On a pan, splitting is free and sizing up buys you nothing. On a platter, sizing up is the discount and splitting costs you.
Order accordingly: take the large platter and take the half pans. The antipasto tray is the one platter that prices like a pan, and it is also the one built on imported cured meats and cheeses rather than raw vegetables, which is a fair trade for the step up.
The salads run on pan pricing and reward the same splitting logic. The list covers house, Caesar, Greek, arugula with shaved parmigiano, a caprese, a prosciutto and gorgonzola salad in raspberry vinaigrette, an antipasto salad, and a chopped salad built on yesterday’s bread. Proteins bolt on as their own line, and they scale with the pan the same way everything else does. Dressing comes on the side, which is what you want when a salad has to survive a drive from the southwest suburbs.
Plan Capri Express catering with CaterAi
What Capri Express sends to an office
The catering list is broader than the pasta-and-chicken core suggests. Appetizers cover bruschetta, eggplant rolls in marinara or vodka sauce, fried and grilled calamari, baked clams, steamed clams and mussels, fried shrimp and a sausage giambotta. Specialty dishes carry lobster tail diavolo, baccala, linguini with clams or mussels in red or white, shrimp in several preparations, tilapia, both lasagnas and a house Italian beef sold by weight for making sandwiches. Sides run spinach, broccoli, rappini, Vesuvio potatoes and grilled vegetables. Desserts are tiramisu, mini cannoli and brownies.
Vegetarian eaters do fine without a special request. Eggplant parmesan, pasta primavera, a dairy-free artichoke dish, cheese lasagna, the salads and the whole vegetable side list all come by the pan, so a meatless pan sits on the table looking like every other pan. Our vegetarian office catering guide covers scoping that share of the room. Gluten-free is handled as a conversation rather than a menu line, so raise it on the call; the gluten-free guide lists the questions worth asking.
Where this menu is the wrong call
Pans need a table and a room. If your team eats at desks on a hybrid schedule, or the food has to split across two floors, you will fight this menu the whole way and an individually portioned order will serve you better. Some of this list also travels better than the rest. Baked pasta, lasagna, parmigiana and the roasted sides hold heat and hold shape. Fried calamari, fried shrimp and anything crisp want to be eaten near the kitchen, so put those on a short-drive order or skip them.
Distance is the other honest limit. Capri Express cooks in Burr Ridge, not in the Loop, so a downtown drop needs a real conversation about timing rather than an assumption. For offices that want the same food style closer in, the Chicago Italian directory lists kitchens in the city, including Firenze Italian Street Food, Pastafi, Arturo’s Deli and Phil’s Italian Doro. Out in the suburbs the same directory carries Fratello’s Italian, Something’s Cooking Italian Kitchen, La Rosa Pizza, Billy Bricks Wood Fired Pizza and, a few doors from Capri itself, One Stop Sub & Slice Shop.
Who Capri Express is ideal for
- Southwest-suburban offices in and around Burr Ridge, Hinsdale, Oak Brook, Willowbrook and Darien, where the drive is short and the food arrives at temperature.
- Rooms of twelve to twenty, the size where the two-half-pans trick does the most work and a table can carry three or four dishes.
- Evening meetings and client dinners, where a menu of veal, seafood and house pastas reads differently from a stack of sandwich platters.
- Recurring team lunches that need to look different week to week without renegotiating a budget, since the preparation and sauce choices cost nothing.
- Mixed rooms that need a meatless pan to sit on the table as an equal rather than as an accommodation.
How to order Capri Express catering
Direct. Capri Express takes catering orders by phone and online through its own catering site, and the printed menu asks you to call about delivery rather than publishing a radius. Direct is the right channel when you want to talk through a preparation, ask about gluten-free handling on a specific dish, or price the sea bass.
Through Zerocater. The Capri Express vendor page carries the current catering menu and pricing, and ordering through Zerocater puts the delivery window, the headcount and the invoice on the same rails as the rest of your food program. If you are still shaping the order, CaterAi builds a menu from your headcount, budget and dietary split, and you edit it by chat until the pans line up. Our how it works page covers the rest of the mechanics, and the event catering checklist is worth a read before anything with a run of show.
Capri Express and Zerocater
Capri Express is one of a thousand-plus culinary partners on the Zerocater network, and it fills a slot that is harder to fill than it looks: a family Italian kitchen with dining-room range that will send that food out in catering quantities. Most kitchens give you one or the other.
For teams building a rotation rather than booking one meal, the Chicago catering directory and our Chicago office catering roundup cover the wider bench, and what office catering costs in Chicago sets expectations before you brief anyone. If you are hunting for a format rather than a cuisine, office lunch ideas by the kind of day your team is having is the faster way in, and Tivoli is the closest thing to a Capri equivalent on the Boston side of the network. Ongoing programs run through corporate catering, and one-off events through event catering.
Menu composition, pan sizing and pricing are set by Capri Express and can change. This post describes the shape of the menu rather than its numbers. Check the Capri Express vendor page for the current catering menu and a live quote, and confirm dietary handling on any specific dish directly with the kitchen before you order.
Plan Capri Express catering with CaterAi
Frequently Asked Questions
How many people does a half pan of Capri Express catering feed?
The catering menu prints the same serving spec on every section. A half pan is built for six to eight people and a full pan for twelve to fifteen. The marketplace listing runs a touch more conservative and spec’s the half pan at six. Use the lower end when the room skews hungry or when the pan is the only hot dish on the table, and the upper end when you have put out two or three pans plus a salad.
Is a full pan cheaper than two half pans?
Almost never, and that is the useful part. Across the pan menu the full pan is priced at exactly twice the half pan on nearly every line, and on the small handful of exceptions it lands just under twice. Nothing lands above. So ordering two half pans of different dishes costs what one full pan of a single dish costs, and it covers the same headcount. Variety is close to free on this menu.
Do the different chicken and veal preparations cost different amounts?
No. Capri Express lists one price for chicken and one price for veal, then hands you a long list of preparations to pick from at no change in price. Marsala, Vesuvio, Francese, Piccata, Parmesan, Saltimbocca and the rest all sit at the same number. The protein you choose moves the bill. The preparation does not.
Can you mix pasta shapes and sauces in one order?
Yes, and the price holds. The pasta section is sold as one pan price against a choice of shape and a choice of sauce, so a pan of gnocchi in vodka sauce and a pan of cavatelli in Bolognese cost the same as two pans of the house default. Ask for the sauce on the side if the pans have to sit through a long meeting.
Does Capri Express deliver to downtown Chicago offices?
Capri Express runs catering delivery out of Burr Ridge, and the catering menu asks you to call for the details rather than printing a radius. Burr Ridge sits southwest of the city, so confirm your delivery window when you book, especially for a morning drop in the Loop. Ordering through Zerocater handles the routing and the timing for you.
Are there vegetarian and gluten-free options?
Vegetarian is well covered in the pan format. Eggplant parmesan, pasta primavera, an artichoke dish built without dairy, cheese lasagna, the full salad list and a row of vegetable sides all come by the half or full pan. Gluten-free works differently here. The menu invites you to ask rather than listing gluten-free items as their own line, so raise it on the call and confirm the specific dish and its preparation.
