Party Catering in Brooklyn, Ordered by the Tray

Party catering in Brooklyn from 1172 Park Place is sold by the full pan. You choose trays from a published list of eighteen items across four sections, every one of them carrying a price, and the range runs from a $40 pan of white rice to a $165 pan of lamb. Nothing is bundled. There's no tier you buy into and no package name to decode. You pick the food, you count the trays, and you call 718-799-7160 to settle that count with the kitchen.

That mechanic governs every occasion on this site. A birthday in an apartment, a hall rented for a sweet sixteen, a weekday send off in a break room: same list, same prices, different number of pans.

What does party catering in Brooklyn cost when it is priced by the tray?

It costs whatever the trays you picked cost, added together. That sounds too simple until you've sat through a catering quote where the number lands at the end with no way to see how it was built.

Four sections carry the eighteen items. Poultry and meat starts at $100 for Pan Fried Chicken and tops out at $165 for Pan Lamb. Seafood sits in the middle of the list. Rice and pasta is the cheapest way to put volume on a table, with White Rice at $40 and Pan Jollof Rice at $85. Sides and salads round the spread out, and Mac & Cheese at $90 is the one most hosts reach for first.

Because the prices are published, you can build the order in your head on the bus. Swap a protein for a cheaper one and you can see the difference immediately. Add a rice tray and you know the number before you dial. If you want the whole list in one place instead of the highlights, the full list of Brooklyn catering tray prices sets out all eighteen items with what each pan costs.

How does ordering by the pan work at a Crown Heights kitchen?

You are buying a complete tray of one thing. Not a plate, not a portion, not a share of a buffet someone else designed. A pan of fried chicken is a pan of fried chicken, and it arrives as that.

The practical effect is that your order is a short list of nouns and a total. Three proteins, two starches, two sides. Most hosts land somewhere near that shape without being told to. It also means you can hand the plan to someone else. If your cousin is picking the food up while you set the room, they are collecting a countable number of trays, not interpreting a menu.

What you can't do from the list alone is work out how many trays your room needs. That is the honest limit of this page, and the next section is about it.

How many people does one full pan feed?

We don't publish a headcount for a pan, and we won't guess one for you. How far a tray goes depends on things only you know: whether people are sitting down to one plate or grazing across an afternoon, how many other trays are on the table, whether there is a cake coming, whether the room is teenagers or grandparents.

Every kitchen that prints a confident number on that question is estimating. We'd rather say it plainly. Call 718-799-7160, tell us the occasion, the room and roughly how many are coming, and we'll size the order with you on the phone. That conversation takes a couple of minutes and it's the single most useful thing you can do before a party.

The same goes for the questions that always follow it. Whether a small order works for your size of gathering, how much notice the kitchen needs for your date, and whether trays can come to you rather than you coming to Park Place: all three depend on the day and the order, so ask on the call. Reading it off a page is how people find out on a Saturday morning that the page was out of date.

What kind of food is on the table at a Brooklyn party from Park Place?

West African and Southern in the same order. That combination is the reason this list looks different from the tray menus around it. A pan of Jollof Rice at $85 can sit beside a pan of collard greens without either one feeling like a guest.

For a lot of Brooklyn families that isn't a novelty, it's just how the table already looks. One side of the room grew up with rice and stew, the other with fried chicken and mac and cheese, and a spread that only honours one of them reads as a choice. If you want the longer version of why the two halves work together and not against each other, West African and soul food on the same table goes through it dish by dish.

The kitchen is family rooted in Freetown, Sierra Leone, which is where the West African half comes from. The Southern half is the food this block has eaten for generations. Both are on one price list.

Which occasion are you planning?

The mechanic is the same everywhere, but what you order changes with the room, the timing and who is paying. These are the pages that go into each one in detail.

Between those three you can get from a rough idea to a placed order without guessing at anything. Each one links onward to the specific occasion pages, so if you are planning a shower, a graduation or an office lunch, you will land on the right page in one more click.

What should you have ready before you call 718-799-7160?

Four things, and none of them require a spreadsheet.

The date, and whether it moves. Where the food is going, including the floor and whether there is an elevator, because that changes how a stack of trays gets into a room. Roughly how many people, even as a range you are not sure of. And any question about ingredients, because we don't publish ingredient information and the phone is the only place to get a straight answer on it.

With that in hand the call is short. You read out the trays you want, we tell you what the total is and what the day looks like, and the order is set. If your guest count moves afterwards, adding a pan is a phone call, not a renegotiation.

Why does tray catering suit a Brooklyn party better than a package?

Because a party in this borough is rarely the tidy event a package is designed for. People bring cousins. Someone's shift changes. The room is a rented hall on one side of Eastern Parkway and the food is coming from Park Place, and the whole thing has to work with what is in front of you on the day rather than a plan drawn a month earlier.

Buying by the tray keeps that flexible. Every unit is visible and priced, so you can see the cost of a decision before you make it. A $40 tray of rice buys you room to breathe. A $165 pan of lamb makes a statement in the middle of a table. You choose which one your budget wants to make.

Catering orders go through the phone at 718-799-7160, and the current tray list lives on the FreeTown catering menu. FreeTown African & American Cuisine is at 1172 Park Place in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and the cheapest thing on that list is still a $40 pan of rice.