The thing people assume they need is a venue. They rarely do. A garden with a marquee in it, or a house with twenty people in it, is a better party than a function room — and the only reason it usually is not on the table is that most caterers cannot work without a kitchen.

Your house is the venue

We arrive with the kitchen: ovens, refrigeration, our own power and our own water. That means a paddock, a lawn, a barn on the farm or a courtyard all work, and none of them needs anything doing to it first.

A sixtieth birthday for eighty people in a garden is the same operational job as a wedding, with a quarter of the planning. We treat it that way.

Private dining at home · Milestone birthdays

Or come to ours

The Outlook at Fox’s Marina in Ipswich is our own waterside café, bar and restaurant. It is open to the public and available for private and exclusive hire.

If you would rather not host at home, and you would rather not take a chance on a caterer you have not eaten, it solves both problems at once.

Shoot lunches

Elevenses taken out to the drive, lunch in the field or at the lodge, and a proper dinner at the end of the day. Most shoots book a block of days at a time, with the menu rotating through the season.

Shoot lunch catering · The shoot menu

Corporate

Bowl food that keeps a room moving, working lunches that arrive when they said they would, directors’ lunches served quietly in your own boardroom, and summer parties. One contact, one invoice.

Corporate catering · Directors’ lunches

The menus

Dinner parties · Afternoon tea · Shoot lunch · Bowl food Getting married rather than throwing a party? See our wedding menus and marquee wedding catering.

From the Journal

• Throwing a party at home — why you almost certainly do not need a venue.
• More on parties and events

Christmas, and the harder occasions

Christmas parties — at home, on your own site, or exclusive hire of our restaurant at Fox’s Marina. Book in October; by mid-November the dates and the staff are gone.

Funerals and wakes — arranged at short notice, with as few decisions as we can leave you. At home, at a hall, or somewhere we can take over for you.

Party planning, as well as the food

Plenty of party planners in Suffolk will organise your event and then bring somebody else in to cook it. We do both, and it is a meaningful difference on the day — the people running the room are the people who made the food, so there is no gap between the two for a problem to fall into.

What planning a party with us covers

• The shape of the evening — seated or standing, one long table or a room people move around. This decides more about how a party feels than the menu does, and it is the decision most often made by accident
• The running order — when people arrive, when they eat, when anything formal happens, and when the music gets louder
• Suppliers — marquee, bar, flowers, music. Somebody has to know who arrives when and who needs power
• The wet-weather plan for anything outdoors, written and agreed, with a named decision time on the morning
• Front of house on the night, so the questions come to us rather than to you

For a larger or more complicated event, see event management and coordination.

Menus

A party is not a wedding with fewer chairs. These are the starting points:

• Bowl food menus — hot, small, carried round; the best way to feed a room that is standing and talking
• Canapé menus — for the first hour, or for a drinks party that is not meant to become a dinner
• Buffets and sharing tables — run so the last table eats as well as the first
• Dinner party menus — for a smaller number, seated, at home
• Evening and street food menus — for later, when people need something in their hand

Tell us the number, the room and roughly what time you want people eating, and we will tell you which of these actually suits it.