Black History Month Catering

A February program is easier to build as a list of restaurants than a list of dishes. Pick four kitchens whose menus barely overlap.

• Soul food. The tradition most rooms expect, covered in the Southern catering guide.
• Creole and Cajun. Gumbo over rice, crawfish étouffée, red beans and andouille. Our New Orleans menu guide runs it dish by dish.
• West African. Nigerian, Ghanaian, and Senegalese kitchens, nothing like the two above.
• Caribbean. Its own thing entirely, laid out in Caribbean catering.

Connected, not interchangeable. The okra in gumbo came from West Africa, and so did the word. One caterer offering all four is usually cooking none of them as its own.

Most offices have never placed this order.

Jollof rice is the centerpiece: long-grain rice cooked down in a tomato and pepper base with stock, so the seasoning sits inside the grain. Nigerian, Ghanaian, and Senegalese cooks each make a different one, and each says theirs is correct.

Suya is the handheld: thin beef skewers in yaji, a rub built on ground peanut and chili. Flag it on the label. The peanut is in the rub, not beside it.

Egusi is the stew, thickened with ground melon seed. It needs bowls, and it comes with a swallow, pounded yam or fufu, torn and dipped by hand. Order it for a seated room.

An Ethiopian kitchen is a different order again: doro wat on injera, no plates at all.

A search for soul food catering returns soul food. It misses the Nigerian kitchen four blocks over, the Haitian one, the vegan spot, and the barbecue truck.

Ownership and cuisine are separate filters. Start from Black-owned catering and read the menus afterward. The shortlist stops looking like the one you had in mind.

Then call before you book. February is when these kitchens sell out, and a small operation will tell you straight whether your date works.

Want an owner to speak to the room? Book that separately, with its own fee.

Much of the same roster cooks in June. Juneteenth catering is the next date they land on.

February usually runs exactly four weeks, so a four-kitchen program has no spare slot. Start in week one, or the month ends before the fourth kitchen cooks.

Super Bowl food, Valentine’s Day, and a Presidents’ Day short week sit in the same four weeks, so claim your dates first.

Each lunch lands at $12 to $20 per person. An unfamiliar kitchen is not a more expensive one.

CaterAi takes the cuisine and the date, then puts up kitchens near the office that cook it daily. What comes after February is under holidays that get their own catering page.