The Top of the Menu, Steak and Lamb Catering Trays in Brooklyn

Pan Steak is $160 and Pan Lamb is $165. Lamb Suya is also $165. Those three trays sit at the ceiling of a catering list where prices run from $40 to $165, which means the most expensive pan on offer is roughly four times the least expensive one.

That spread is worth sitting with for a second, because it tells you where the money in a catering order goes. It doesn't go into the sides. A tray of collard greens is $60 and a tray of mashed potato is $80, and you could put both on a table for less than half of one lamb pan. The protein is what moves the number, and the top of the protein list is where an order gets decided.

When does a $160 steak tray earn its place on a Brooklyn spread?

When somebody at the table is meant to feel honoured by it.

That sounds sentimental for a price list, but it's the practical test and it works. A premium tray isn't bought for volume. Pound for pound and dollar for dollar there's more food on a table for $160 spent on chicken and rice than there is for $160 spent on steak. Nobody ordering steak is confused about that. They are buying what the tray says.

So the days it fits are the days with a person or a milestone at the center of them.

And the days it doesn't fit are just as clear. A long casual afternoon with children in it doesn't need a $165 pan. A spread where the priority is that nobody goes home hungry doesn't either. On those days the same money buys a pan of fried chicken at $100 plus a pan of jollof rice at $85, which is more food and a fuller looking table.

What is the difference between Pan Lamb and Lamb Suya at $165?

Same price, two different traditions, and this is the fork in the road that most catering menus in this part of Brooklyn don't offer at all.

Pan Lamb at $165

This is the tray that reads as the formal centerpiece. It's the one people expect at a table set for a milestone, and it doesn't need any explanation when it lands. If the room includes guests you want to impress without asking them to be adventurous, this is the safer of the two.

Lamb Suya at $165

Suya is a Nigerian and Hausa grilled meat, and the same lamb through that tradition is a different proposition on a table. It carries the West African half of this kitchen, and it is the tray that makes a spread specific rather than generic. For a Brooklyn room with West African guests in it, or a host who wants the table to say something about where the food comes from, this is the more interesting one hundred and sixty five dollars. If you haven't met suya before, what suya is and where the Nigerian grilled meat comes from explains it plainly.

You can also order both. On a large spread, a pan of lamb and a pan of lamb suya beside each other is a statement about the whole table, and it's the kind of order that isn't really purchasable elsewhere in central Brooklyn.

Should a Crown Heights spread have one premium tray or two?

One, in almost every case.

A single top tray does the work. It anchors the table, it's what people photograph, and it's what somebody mentions later. Two premium trays at $160 and $165 double the cost of the anchor without doubling the effect, and they usually crowd out the starches and sides that make the plates work.

The stronger order looks like this. One premium protein at the top. One familiar protein carrying the volume, chicken or turkey wings. One rice, one or two sides. That shape lands better than a table of expensive trays with nothing underneath them.

The exception is a large room. If you're ordering many pans, a second premium tray stops being the whole budget and starts being one line among several, and at that point the lamb and steak question turns into a lamb and steak answer.

How do the top trays compare with the seafood trays?

Close in price, different in what they signal.

Pan Salmon is $150 and Pan Shrimp is $125, so the gap between the top of the seafood section and the top of the meat section is smaller than most hosts assume. Salmon is ten dollars under steak. That means the choice isn't really a budget choice, it's a question of what the room responds to.

Meat reads as substantial and traditional. Seafood reads as considered and a little lighter. For some rooms one is clearly right and the other is clearly wrong, and you'll know which within a second of picturing the table. If you want the fuller version of that argument, shrimp and salmon catering trays for a Brooklyn occasion works through when seafood is the better step up.

What goes underneath a $165 tray?

The cheapest trays on the list, which is the part that surprises people.

A premium protein needs a base, and the base doesn't need to be expensive. White Rice is $40 and it's the least expensive pan on offer. Pan Jollof Rice is $85 and it brings its own seasoning to the table. Which one you put under lamb changes the character of the plate more than any side dish will, and choosing between white rice and jollof rice as the base of a spread is worth reading before you decide, because that call isn't a small one when the protein is a suya.

The sides matter less than the rice here. Greens, mac and cheese, mashed potato all sit comfortably under any of the top trays, and the guide to soul food catering in Brooklyn by the pan sets out what each of them costs.

Why does one tray cost $40 and another cost $165?

Because of what's inside it, mostly. That is the short version, and the long version, including how that logic runs across the whole eighteen item list, sits in why one catering tray costs forty dollars and another costs one hundred and sixty five.

What is worth saying on this page is that the published price is the price. There's no tier, no package, no quote that arrives at the end with a number you can't break down. You're looking at a list, you pick pans off it, and you add them up. That's unusual enough in catering that it's worth stating plainly.

What the list can't do is answer the questions a careful host asks next. How the meat is sourced, what cut is in the pan, and how it's cooked and finished are all conversations for the kitchen, not for a paragraph written in advance. So is how hot anything is prepared, which matters most with the suya. Call 718-799-7160 and ask directly. You'll get a straight answer from someone who works with the food.

We also don't publish how many people one full pan holds. Nobody sensible does, because the honest answer depends on your room, on whether the tray is the only protein or one of three, and on whether people are sitting down to a plate or grazing. Tell us the occasion on the phone and we'll size it with you. That call is a couple of minutes and it's the difference between an order that works and one that guesses.