Hispanic Heritage Month Catering

The reflex order is a taco bar on a Tuesday in September. It is a good lunch. It is also standing in for Spain, Mexico, Central and South America, and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean: more than twenty countries, about as many kitchens.

They cook nothing alike:

• Peruvian: lomo saltado, beef seared in a wok with soy and vinegar, beside ají de gallina
• Cuban: ropa vieja braised in tomato and pepper, with black beans, rice, plantains
• Argentinian: skirt steak and chimichurri, plus empanadas baked rather than fried
• Spanish: tortilla española in cold wedges, patatas bravas, pan con tomate

One chef we interviewed put it flatly: Peruvian food could not be more different from Mexican. A lunch picks one. A month does not.

The month runs September 15 to October 15, so it holds four weekday lunches, sometimes five. Give each week to a different country:

• Mexican first, because most rooms already know how to eat it. The Mexican catering guide has the taco bar math.
• Peruvian second. Lomo saltado and ají de gallina hold their heat. Leave ceviche alone unless the kitchen is minutes away.
• Cuban or Puerto Rican third: pernil, rice and beans, tostones, pressed cubanos on a boxed day.
• Argentinian or Spanish fourth: empanadas by the dozen, or a paella pan for a room that sits down.

Colombian and Salvadoran kitchens fill a fifth slot: arepas, bandeja paisa, pupusas with curtido. Cost per head is the ordinary themed lunch range, $12 to $20 delivered.

A rotation is only as good as who cooks it. Order from Latino-owned restaurants, and put the restaurant name in the calendar invite instead of the country. People remember a name.

Our vendor spotlight put the same questions to chefs cooking Peruvian, Argentinian, and Spanish food, and no two answers matched. Read those chefs in their own words, then browse Latino-owned catering for the ones cooking near your office.

Then keep ordering after October 15. Four weeks of business and then silence is a campaign. A caterer you come back to in February is a relationship.

The window straddles September and October, which is why it gets away from people. Book all four kitchens in one sitting, before the fifteenth. Small kitchens fill weekday slots early.

The month opens on September 15 because five Central American countries mark independence that day, and Mexico marks its own on the 16th. Either date makes a strong first lunch.

Four separate orders is where planners give up and repeat the taco bar. CaterAi keeps the headcount and the restrictions on file, so weeks two through four are a menu choice, not a fresh brief. A crowded fall stretch follows, and holiday catering by date covers what comes next.