Catering an Event in Prospect Lefferts Gardens

The food is not the difficult part of a catering order in Prospect Lefferts Gardens. The last hundred feet is.

Sidewalk, vestibule, locked inner door, stairwell or a small elevator cab, then a hallway and your own front door. That stretch is where trays get tilted, lids come loose, and one person ends up holding two pans while trying to reach a buzzer. The buildings along Flatbush and Empire are largely prewar, which means narrow entries, half landings and a super who has views about what comes through the front door. All of it is manageable. None of it manages itself.

What is the hardest part of a catering order in Prospect Lefferts Gardens?

Getting a wide, flat, full pan from street level to an apartment door without turning it.

A party tray is not shaped like anything else you carry home. It is broad, it is shallow, it wants both hands, and the moment it goes past level the contents move to one end. Nobody notices that on a sidewalk. Everybody notices it on the third turn of a prewar staircase.

That single fact should shape the order before it shapes the day. Fewer pans is better than more pans. Two people is better than one. And knowing your building's specific obstacles in advance is worth more than any amount of planning about the food itself.

How do you get a full pan through a prewar vestibule and up the stairs?

In two stages, with somebody already downstairs.

The buzzer and the second door

Most of these buildings have an outer door that stands open and an inner door that does not. Between them is a vestibule barely wide enough to turn around in, and a panel of buzzers that may or may not be reliable. A person carrying a full pan cannot press a button, cannot hold a door open, and cannot answer a phone.

So the fix is a person, not a plan. Somebody stands in the vestibule holding the inner door while the trays come in. If you're collecting the order yourself, that means two of you: one carrying, one on doors. If somebody else is bringing the food, meet them at street level. Wait upstairs and you get a stranger with two pans standing in a doorway calling your phone.

The stairwell itself

Prewar stairs turn. There is usually a half landing between floors, and the turn is tighter than the flight. Carry the pan flat in front of you with one hand under the base and one on the rim, and accept that you cannot see your own feet while doing it. This is why someone goes ahead and clears the way.

Bring everything to the apartment door first, all of it, and only then start opening lids. Opening a tray in a hallway because you want to check it is how the fourth floor ends up smelling like dinner and how a lid ends up on the floor.

Which trays travel best up to a fourth floor apartment?

The ones with the least to slosh.

White Rice at $40 is the easiest pan in the building. It's the cheapest tray on the list, it holds its shape, and a tilt does nothing to it. When the carry is genuinely awkward, taking rice as one of your starches instead of something soft is a small decision that pays off on the stairs.

Pan Baked Chicken at $100 travels better up a staircase than anything swimming in liquid. There is less to move around inside the pan, so the tray arrives looking the way it left. It also holds its heat reasonably through a slow trip, which a thin tray does not.

Pan Collard Greens at $60 is the one to be honest about. Greens carry liquid, the pan is heavy for its size, and it's the tray most likely to end up with everything at one end. It is worth ordering, it just wants the steadier carrier and the flat hold. Put it on the bottom of nothing and carry it on its own.

Beyond the individual trays, the general rule holds: if you have a choice between one more pan and one fewer, in a prewar walk-up take one fewer and order a larger share of what you already picked. The broader carry problem, including brownstones and stoops, is covered properly in what a Brooklyn walk-up or brownstone does to a catering order. This page is only about the buildings on these blocks.

Does the super need to know about a catering order in Prospect Lefferts Gardens?

Often, and it costs nothing to ask.

In a lot of prewar buildings the passenger elevator is small and the building would rather anything bulky went through a service entrance or a back stair. Some supers keep the service door locked and will open it if asked. Some won't care at all. The only wrong move is finding out at the moment you are standing in the lobby with four pans.

Ask two questions ahead of the day. Is there a service entrance or a back stair that is easier for something wide. And is anyone likely to be working in the lobby or the stairwell that afternoon. Both take a minute and both remove the situation nobody plans for.

What is left to settle on the phone?

Three things, and none of them can honestly be printed on a page.

Whether the order can come to you at all, and on what terms, or whether someone is collecting it from 1172 Park Place in Crown Heights. That depends on the day and the order.

Whether serving utensils or racks come with the trays. Ask. Don't assume, because in a small apartment the missing serving spoon is a real problem.

What time an order can be ready for your date, which depends on the date and on what else the kitchen is holding.

Describe the building on 718-799-7160 as plainly as you'd describe it to a friend and those three get answered in one go. If the gathering is going to be in a house with a yard rather than an apartment, how a Bedford Stuyvesant backyard spread gets carried and staged is the version of this page for that room, and catering a congregation event in Flatbush covers the hall version. The whole tray list with published prices sits on catering from the Crown Heights kitchen on Park Place.