Block Party Catering in Crown Heights and Central Brooklyn

A block party is the hardest catering job on this list, and it has nothing to do with the food. It's the conditions. No kitchen. No power unless somebody runs a cord from a window. No refrigeration. A permit that covers most of a day, which means the food has to arrive in more than one piece or the back half of the afternoon becomes a problem.

So the honest advice for a Crown Heights block party is not about what to order. It is about when to order it.

Why does a Brooklyn block party need to be ordered in waves?

Because a permitted street event runs far longer than food sits well outdoors. A single delivery at noon is a spread that peaks at half past twelve and declines for the rest of the afternoon in the sun.

Splitting the order changes the whole day. The first wave lands when the tables go up and feeds the crowd that shows early, which is mostly the people who did the setting up. The second wave lands later, when the block is fullest, and it lands hot. Nobody at four in the afternoon is eating something that has been sitting since noon.

Whether a second run is possible for your date and your street is a question for us, not for a web page. Call 718-799-7160 and ask about the day you have the permit for. Same for delivery generally: whether we can bring it to you and on what terms depends on the date and the block, so ask us directly.

What food holds up at the curb with no refrigeration?

Cooked, dense, and forgiving. Everything on this list is priced by the full pan.

• Pan Fried Chicken at $100. The single best block party tray we make. It is good hot, it is good warm, people eat it standing up with one hand, and it doesn't need a plate.
• White Rice at $40. The cheapest tray on our menu and the one that makes a plate out of everything else. On a long day you want more of this than you planned.
• Pan Jollof Rice at $85. West African tomato rice, seasoned through, and it doesn't go dull as it cools the way plain starch does.
• Mac and Cheese at $90. It will be gone in the first hour. That is fine. Order it knowing that, or hold a tray back for the second wave.
• Pan Whiting at $115. Fried whiting, and the tray that makes the block ask who catered. Put this one in the later wave when the crowd is at its biggest.

What does not work outdoors is anything built to be assembled cold or eaten with a fork and knife. A block party plate gets balanced on a forearm.

What does a block party spread cost in Crown Heights?

Each figure above is a full pan, also called a party tray. None of them is the price of a serving, so do not multiply by the number of neighbors you expect.

Across the whole catering list, trays run from $40 to $165. Most block party orders live in the lower half, because fried chicken, rice and mac and cheese are the trays that do the most work per dollar in an outdoor crowd. Save the top of the range for a wedding, not for a folding table on Park Place.

If the association is funding this out of collected dues and somebody has to report back on the spend, the discipline in fundraiser catering in Brooklyn transfers directly.

How do you set up the food line on a closed street?

Set it up like a system, not like a buffet, and it will run itself.

• Put the tables against the building line, not in the middle of the road. It halves the crowding and keeps the street open for children.
• Run one direction only. Plates at one end, protein next, starch and sides after. Two-sided tables at a block party create a scrum.
• Keep the trays covered between servings. Not for temperature, for the street.
• Do not put every tray out at once. Two trays out, the rest closed, and refill. An open tray in the sun for three hours is a tray you throw away.
• Assign two people. One serving, one watching the food. It is the one job that never gets assigned and always gets missed.

Whether serving utensils, chafing racks or any setup come with a catering order is not something we publish, so call 718-799-7160 and ask before you assume you have spoons. Turning up to a closed street with five trays and no serving equipment is a specific kind of bad afternoon.

How much should the block association order?

We are not going to invent a number for you, and you should be suspicious of anyone who does.

We do not publish how many people one full pan feeds. It is the most-asked question in catering and the one that has no honest answer on any page, ours included, because it depends on how many trays are on the table, whether it's a plated line or a grab-and-go, and how long the day runs. A block party makes it harder still, because half the block wanders past twice.

The way to get a real answer is to call 718-799-7160, tell us how many houses are on the block, how long the permit runs, and whether you're splitting into waves. We'll size it with you. Four minutes on the phone is the difference between running out at three in the afternoon and throwing away a tray at seven.

Ordering block party catering from 1172 Park Place

FreeTown African & American Cuisine is a family kitchen in Crown Heights, rooted in Freetown, Sierra Leone, cooking West African and Southern food off a single catering menu. On a Central Brooklyn block that is the practical advantage: a table carrying jollof rice next to fried chicken and mac and cheese reflects the block back at itself, and you booked one kitchen to do it. That combination is genuinely hard to buy anywhere else around here.

Decide the wave question before you call. One drop or two changes the tray list more than anything else you will pick. Then dial 718-799-7160 and we will build it around the permit hours.

Three other pages sit close to this one. Party catering in Brooklyn is the plain guide to buying food by the pan. If your block event is really a season kickoff for a team, sports banquet and team dinner catering in Brooklyn is closer. If it's a private yard and not a closed street, read backyard cookout catering in Brooklyn instead, and if your block sits along the parkway, catering near Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn covers that stretch specifically.