How the food stays hot at the far end of a four hundred guest buffet

The complaint nobody makes to the caterer and everybody makes in the car home is that the food was cold.

What happened

It is almost never a cooking problem.

It is a queue problem and a counter problem.

One counter serves about eighty to a hundred guests before a queue forms, and once a queue forms the plate at the back is waiting eleven or twelve minutes.

So the number of counters is set from the headcount before the menu is written, not after.

Rice and gravies hold.

Fried items and dosas do not, which is why they belong on a live counter cooked to order rather than in a chafing dish going soft.

A sadya has its own arithmetic entirely: one server to about twelve leaves, because the rasam has to reach the last row while it is still hot enough to matter.

Ask any caterer how many counters and how many servers they are putting on your headcount.

If the answer is vague, that is your cold food.

Why we are writing this down

Most of what a fine indian hospitality — catering learns disappears into the next booking. We write it down instead, so the next family asking the same question gets a real answer rather than a brochure.