Indian Catering: Authentic Cuisine for Your Next Event

One shape covers most office lunches: two curries, one meat and one paneer or lentil, over basmati, with naan alongside and something fried to open.

• Meat curry: butter chicken or chicken tikka masala.
• Meatless curry: palak paneer, chana masala, or dal makhani.
• Rice: plain or jeera basmati under everything.
• Bread and starter: naan, with samosas or pakora up front.

The second curry is why this cuisine earns its slot. On most menus the vegetarian entree is whatever is left once the real menu is built, and it eats like it. Indian is close to the only office cuisine where that is not true. Roughly half of a full Indian menu is meatless by default, and chana masala or dal is a dish people pick on purpose. Order the paneer curry because it is good, not to cover a restriction.

Rice is the floor and the curries sit on top of it. Figure about a cup of cooked rice per person and roughly half a cup of each curry, which is why two curries and a rice eat as one full plate rather than two half meals.

Naan breaks the pattern. Plan on close to two pieces a head for a buffet running two or three curries, add a buffer of about 15 percent, and expect it to run out first anyway. Ask for it wrapped and warm rather than stacked on an open tray, where it goes leathery inside an hour.

Past 25 people, add a second rice and a third curry rather than bigger pans of the same two.

Tell the caterer this is a mixed corporate audience and let them calibrate, a request they field every week. Keep the base of the menu mild, since the creamy gravies already are, and buy your heat as a separate item: one spicier curry for the people who want it, plus chutneys and a bowl of raita for the people who do not. Then label every dish on the line, spice level included. Labels cost nothing, and they decide whether someone tries an unfamiliar dish or skips the table.

This page is the short version. The long one, our guide to Indian corporate catering, covers what does not fit here: the four service formats, North Indian against South Indian against Indo-Chinese, serving sizes from 10 to 200 people, and the full dietary breakdown. Read it before your first order.

The festival version has its own page. Diwali catering is where the mithai platters and the live chaat or dosa counters belong, and it books further out than an ordinary Indian lunch.

CaterAi holds your team’s dietary counts, so the meatless half of the order gets sized off the roster. The other cuisines worth an office rotation are listed under corporate catering by cuisine.