Turkish Catering

A Turkish kebab order shows up already divided. Adana and shish arrive on their own skewers, and doner is shaved off a vertical spit as people come up, so nothing needs carving on a conference table.

Turkey sits inside the Mediterranean basin and cooks like its own country. The overlap is genuine, warm bread and dips and grilled meat, and past that the menus separate: the vertical spit, the baked flatbreads pide and lahmacun, and a canon of slow Ottoman braises such as hunkar begendi, lamb over smoked eggplant. Order Mediterranean catering for the whole basin on one table. Order Turkish for one national kitchen doing what it does best.

Kebabs are sold by the portion, so your headcount is the order. Adana is spiced ground lamb hand-pressed along a flat skewer. Urfa is the same shape with the chili left out. Shish is cubed lamb or chicken. One of any of them feeds one person next to rice or bulgur pilav.

Portion weight varies between kitchens, so when you compare two quotes, ask what a single skewer weighs.

Doner is the exception, carved as guests reach the front rather than counted in advance. Put a spit and skewers on one table and order fewer skewers.

Halal sourcing is ordinary practice in a Turkish kitchen, not a special request, which is why doner and kebab menus turn up so often on catering orders for a halal room. The whole order can go out that way without anyone planning a second one.

Treat it as the norm and not a promise. Ask whether the meat is halal-sourced or certified, and get that answer into the written order. Our breakdown of what halal asks of a caterer sets out the questions that separate a halal kitchen from a halal dish.

Sigara borek opens the table: feta and parsley rolled in thin yufka pastry and fried into crisp cigars, which keep their snap longer than most fried starters.

Pide holds the middle. It bakes as a long boat of flatbread under cheese, minced lamb, or sucuk sausage, then gets cut across into strips, which is why a single pide feeds a crowd instead of a plate. Lahmacun is the handheld one: a thin round with spiced lamb that guests squeeze lemon over, scatter parsley on, and roll.

Finish on baklava, which travels, or kunefe, which does not. Kunefe is cheese under shredded pastry and hot syrup, so order it only where it goes straight from oven to table.

CaterAi sizes a Turkish order off two numbers, the headcount and how many plates have to be halal. Catering cuisine options for the office lists what else a lunch calendar can pull from.