Ordering a Tray of Mashed Potatoes for a Brooklyn Event

A full pan of mashed potato is $80 from the catering list at 1172 Park Place in Crown Heights. It is the softest thing on that list and the plainest, and those are both reasons to order it, not reasons to skip it. Every room has people in it who need a plate that doesn't fight back.

Most hosts build a spread from the top down. They pick the protein they want people to talk about, then a rice, then whatever side is loudest. Mashed potato tends to get left in the last round of cuts because it sounds like filler. Then the food comes out, and the two grandparents and the four kids and the one person who came straight from a long shift all go looking for the same thing, which is something warm and soft that doesn't need to be worked at.

What does a tray of mashed potatoes cost for a Brooklyn event?

Eighty dollars for a full pan. That is the published price and there is no other version of it. Nothing on this menu is sold as a portion or a plate, so the $80 buys the whole tray of mashed potato and you decide how many trays the day needs.

It sits in the middle of the sides section. Pan Caesar Salad and Pan Collard Greens are both $60, mashed potato is $80, and Mac and Cheese is $90. Against the proteins it's inexpensive. A pan of turkey wings runs $140 and a pan of baked chicken runs $100, so adding the potato to either one moves the order less than most people expect.

If you want the wider view of how a Southern spread is priced out here, the guide to soul food catering in Brooklyn by the pan lays out what each tray on that side of the menu costs.

Who at the table is the mashed potato tray really for?

Everyone eventually, but a few people first.

That last one matters more than it sounds. A buffet plate held in one hand while a conversation happens is a plate where the soft starch gets eaten and the rest gets carried around. Mashed potato is the item that survives that situation.

How does a mashed potato pan behave on a buffet line in Crown Heights?

It holds. Rice can tighten up at the edges of a tray if it sits, and fried items give up their crunch on a timeline you can't argue with. Mashed potato changes least of anything on the table between the first plate and the last one. If your event has a long tail, people arriving over a couple of hours rather than all sitting down at once, that stability is the whole argument for the tray.

It also serves fast, which is the quiet reason it belongs near the front of a line. A big spoon goes in and comes out, and there is no picking, no separating, no deciding which piece is yours. Tongs slow a line down. Spoons don't. If you're thinking about how the line itself moves, that same logic runs through the tray of fried whiting and how fried fish behaves as catering, which is the opposite case in almost every way.

One practical note. Mashed potato takes on whatever is next to it on the plate, so it's the item that catches what runs off the proteins. That is a feature. It's also why it belongs after the meat on the line and not before it, if you have the room to lay the table out that way.

What should sit next to the $80 mashed potato pan on a Brooklyn table?

Pair it with weight. The trays that make the strongest case for a soft starch are the ones that take the most work to eat.

What you don't need is two soft starches doing the same job. Mashed potato and Mac and Cheese on the same table both read as the comfortable option, and if the budget only stretches to one, pick the one that suits the room instead of ordering both and watching half of each come home.

Should you order mashed potato or white rice, or both?

Both, if the room is mixed. They are not competing.

White Rice is $40 a pan, the least expensive tray on the whole list, and it does a different job. Rice is the neutral base that goes under everything and stretches a table. Mashed potato at $80 is not a base, it is a side people take on purpose. A spread with rice and no potato feeds everyone. A spread with potato and no rice feels considered but runs out of floor.

For a table where half the food is West African and half is Southern, the rice question gets more interesting than it looks, and choosing between white rice and jollof rice as the base of a spread is worth reading before you lock the order in.

If the budget is tight, the $40 rice tray goes in first. If there is room after that, the $80 potato is the next best eighty dollars you can spend on a room with a wide age range in it.

How many people does one $80 pan of mashed potato feed?

We don't publish that, and you should be a little suspicious of anyone who does. The honest answer depends on whether people are sitting down to one plate or grazing across an afternoon, and on how many other trays are beside it. Call 718-799-7160, describe the room and the occasion, and the tray count gets worked out with you in about a minute.

There's a second thing we won't put on a page, which is how the mashed potato is made. What goes into it, how it's finished, and how the kitchen handles cooking surfaces and cross contact for anyone with something they need to avoid are all questions for a person, not a paragraph. Ring and ask. The kitchen can answer directly and you'll get a real answer instead of a hedge.

And if you're still deciding whether the spread needs a cold item alongside all of this, putting a salad on a table where everything else is hot covers the other end of the same problem. A tray of turkey wings is $140 and a tray of mashed potato is $80. Between the two of them you have most of a table.