Why the caterer stays yours.

Every hall we rented made its money on food, and the food was worse for it. That isn’t a coincidence. When the room and the menu arrive on the same invoice, the menu gets designed to protect the invoice, and your mother’s opinion of the biryani stops being anybody’s problem.

Handing the catering back to you costs us the easiest margin in this business, and we’re giving it up deliberately. Book the room and bring whoever cooks for your people: the caterer your cousin swears by, the aunty who does the sweets, the restaurant that has been feeding your family since before you could drive. Any cuisine — halal, vegetarian, Caribbean, Filipino, whatever the day calls for. No in-house menu, no food minimums, no surcharge.

All we’ll ask is who’s cooking and when they need to get in, because that’s how a day runs on time. This is the rule I’d be likeliest to trade away when the numbers get tight, which is precisely why it’s written down in public — here, and again on the outside catering page, where the questions to ask any venue are listed out.