The one-gravy problem
Volume catering rewards shortcuts, and the biggest shortcut is the base gravy: an onion-tomato-cashew base made in one huge pot at dawn, then divided — cream and butter for the makhani, chicken for the tikka masala, extra pepper for the dish labelled Chettinad, coconut for the one labelled Kerala. It is efficient. It is also why the wedding guest who has eaten at four receptions this month cannot tell them apart.
The one-hand problem
The second shortcut is the chef. A "multi-cuisine" kitchen is usually a North Indian kitchen whose chef also does Chinese because the burner is there, and Continental because pasta is easy, and South Indian because there is a dosa tawa. A Bengali who eats that kitchen's kosha mangsho, or a Malayali who eats its sadya, knows within one mouthful.
What the critics say
Food critics and writers grumble about multi-cuisine restaurants, declaring them "synonymous with uninspired and unauthentic food," skeptical of one chef's ability to expertly cook multiple cuisines from different countries.
— Meher Mirza, The Juggernaut, June 2021
Restaurant trade writing says the same: multi-cuisine menus sacrifice "originality and consistency" and single-cuisine focus is "seen as more legitimate and authentic" (Restaurant India, August 2025). Every food lover in Bangalore has said it more bluntly at a wedding.
The only fix
Not a better recipe. A different structure. Each cuisine gets its own chef, who cooks only that cuisine, with their own masala base, their own vessels and their own line at the event. The Chettinad chef roasts the Chettinad masala. The Kerala chef grates the coconut. The wok chef tosses one portion at a time. None of them cooks the other's food, and none of them is asked to. That is what "the pass" means on this site, and it is the whole reason the house exists — see one chef, one cuisine.