Not every catering order needs a roast.
Or a BBQ chef.
Or a long buffet line with eight different dishes.
Sometimes what you actually need is a lot of food that people can pick up and eat easily.
This order for a gathering at Coldstream Ave was exactly that.
The menu was:
100 pieces of fried chicken.
50 pieces of lemongrass chicken.
50 vegetable spring rolls.
30 sausage rolls.
30 churros.
30 ondeh ondeh.
Put all of that together and you end up with 290 individual pieces of food.
No complicated menu.
No huge centrepiece.
Just a lot of things people can keep reaching for.
Finger Food Solves a Very Different Catering Problem
When people search for catering in Singapore, the default idea is often a buffet.
Rice.
Noodles.
Several mains.
Vegetables.
Chafing dishes.
Plates lined up at one end of the room.
There is absolutely a place for that.
But not every gathering works like a sit-down meal.
Sometimes people are moving around.
Talking.
Standing.
Arriving at different times.
Holding a drink in one hand.
And in that kind of setting, a plate full of rice and three dishes can actually be less convenient than something you can simply pick up.
That’s where finger food starts making a lot of sense.
100 Pieces of Fried Chicken Is Hard to Ignore
The largest single item in this order was fried chicken.
100 pieces of it.
There is probably a reason fried chicken keeps appearing at parties.
It doesn’t need much explanation.
It works for adults.
It works for kids.
Nobody has to figure out how to eat it.
And unlike something that needs to stay at one very precise temperature to be enjoyable, fried chicken is relatively forgiving during a gathering.
Then there was lemongrass chicken for something with a different flavour profile.
So even within the chicken itself, there was variety.
Then You Need Things That Break Up the Savoury Food
This is where the churros and ondeh ondeh come in.
One is familiar Western-style party food.
The other is about as local as it gets.
Again, they don’t technically “match”.
We don’t think they need to.
People don’t stand around a party analysing whether the dessert selection belongs to the same culinary tradition as the fried chicken.
They see something they like.
They take one.
That’s usually the end of the decision-making process.
And having smaller sweet items means dessert doesn’t need to become another formal course.
Someone can have an ondeh ondeh.
Then twenty minutes later decide they have space for a churro.
Small Items Add Up Very Quickly
One thing people sometimes underestimate when ordering party food is how different the numbers look once everything is portioned individually.
Thirty pieces doesn’t sound enormous on its own.
Neither does fifty.
But once you combine several different items, the table fills up quickly.
That’s exactly what happened on this order:
100 fried chicken.
50 lemongrass chicken.
50 spring rolls.
30 sausage rolls.
30 churros.
30 ondeh ondeh.
290 pieces in total.
That gives people variety without needing to prepare 290 individual meals.
It also allows everyone to build their own little combination depending on what they actually feel like eating.
Catering Doesn’t Always Need to Be Complicated
We spend plenty of time thinking about large BBQ menus, premium roasts, live stations and seafood.
But simpler cooked-food catering has its own advantage.
It can be extremely practical.
Especially for home parties, office gatherings and casual celebrations where the food needs to fit around the event rather than the event revolving around the food.
No carving station.
No grill management.
No complicated service sequence.
Put the food out.
Let people eat.
Top things up as they disappear.
Sometimes that is exactly what the occasion needs.
The Right Menu Depends on How People Are Going to Eat
We’ve gradually learnt that catering isn’t only about asking:
“How many people?”
It’s also:
How are they gathering?
Will everyone eat at once?
Are they sitting down?
Are they walking around?
Is this supposed to be a full meal?
Or do we simply need enough good food around so nobody goes hungry?
For some events, a proper buffet is the obvious answer.
For others, premium roasts make sense.
Sometimes it’s a BBQ.
And sometimes the answer is surprisingly straightforward.
290 things you can pick up and eat.
