The Least Expensive Catering Trays on a Brooklyn Menu

Which catering trays cost the least in Crown Heights

At FreeTown African & American Cuisine on Park Place, the six least expensive full pans are white rice at $40, Caesar salad at $60, collard greens at $60, mashed potato at $80, jollof rice at $85 and FreeTown Pasta at $85.

That is the bottom third of the menu, and it covers both rice trays, both salad and greens trays, and both of the starchy sides that people build a plate around. It is not a leftovers section. It is the spine of a buffet table.

Why do the cheapest trays do the most work on a buffet table

Walk down a table at a Brooklyn repast, a christening or a graduation and watch what happens to the plates. The protein goes on in a piece or two. Everything else goes on in spoonfuls, and it is the spoonfuls that fill the plate.

That is why the low end of a catering list is not the compromise section. Rice, greens and a starch are what turn two proteins into a meal. Take them away and you have a tray of chicken and a room full of people holding empty plates. A pan of collard greens at $60 does more visible work on that table than a great deal of what costs twice as much.

There is a second thing worth noticing. The trays at the bottom of the list are the ones nearly everybody eats. Not every guest will touch the lamb. Almost every guest takes rice.

That has a consequence for how you order. The trays most likely to run out first are usually the inexpensive ones, because they are the ones every single plate draws from. A room can leave half a protein tray sitting there and still clear the rice completely. If you are deciding where to put an extra 40 or 60 dollars, the bottom of the list is often where it does the most visible good.

What do you give up by ordering the cheaper trays

Less than the price gap suggests, and it's worth being precise here.

What you give up is protein. That is the entire difference. The gap between a $40 pan and a $165 pan on this menu is what is in the pan, not how much care went into it. A pan of jollof rice at $85 is a full pan of the West African rice on the list, not a smaller or lesser version of it. A pan of collard greens at $60 is a full pan of the Southern green. The price reflects what the ingredients cost, which is covered in more detail in why one tray costs 40 dollars and another costs 165.

What you do not give up is portion size, since every tray on this list is a full pan regardless of price. You do not get a smaller pan of rice because rice is cheaper. A $40 tray and a $165 tray arrive as the same unit of purchase.

Where does the low end of a Brooklyn catering list stop

At $85, and there are two very different trays sitting on that line.

Pan Jollof Rice at $85 is the seasoned option, cooked in a tomato and pepper base, and it is the tray that makes an order from this kitchen look like something other than standard party catering. White rice at $40 is the neutral option that goes under everything and never argues with any dish on the table. Which one belongs on your table is a real decision and not a money decision, and it is worth reading white rice or jollof rice for a catering spread before defaulting to one.

FreeTown Pasta also sits at $85 and behaves differently again. It is the only tray on the menu with published add-on pricing, which makes it the flexible one. It can stay a side at $85 or move up into protein territory when something is added to it.

Above $85 the list moves into mac and cheese at $90 and then into the proteins, and the character of the spend changes.

How to build an order that leans on the lower half

A few patterns that work, none of which require spending at the top of the list.

• One protein, two starches and a green, so the plate fills out without a second protein tray.
• Both rices on the table, white and jollof, which costs less than adding a second protein and pleases a wider room.
• Caesar salad at $60 as the tray that gives people something cold and sharp next to everything else.
• Mashed potato at $80 when the crowd skews toward Southern and soul food instead of rice.

Any of those can be priced out to the dollar in advance from the full Crown Heights catering tray price list, and there is a set of worked totals in what a 500 dollar budget buys in Brooklyn catering if you want to see how the numbers stack up in practice.

So how many of these trays does your table want?

That's the one thing the published list can't answer, and it isn't a dodge.

How far a pan goes depends on what's beside it. Two starch trays next to one protein behave differently from one starch next to three proteins, and a table people graze at all afternoon behaves differently from a sit-down where everyone eats at once. A serving count printed on a menu would be a guess with a nice font on it, and the ones you find in this business mean nothing.

Whether there is an order minimum isn't published either. Both questions get answered on the phone.

Come to the call with the trays already picked. Say what you're feeding and how many people are coming, and somebody on 718-799-7160 will tell you whether three trays is right or whether you want five. Starting from real prices turns that into a two-minute conversation.