We are based at Mickfield, between Stowmarket and Debenham, which puts most of Suffolk within forty minutes. That is not a marketing radius. It is the difference between a chef arriving at six in the morning and a chef arriving the night before.

Where we work

Barns, halls, country houses and fields, from the Stour valley up to the Waveney and out to the coast. Suffolk has more good wedding venues per acre than anywhere else we work, and a large number of them are barns with a catering kitchen — which makes the county unusually easy to cater well in.

The exception, and the interesting one, is the marquee wedding: a field on a family farm, or a paddock behind a house. There is nothing there, and that is our strongest work. See marquee wedding catering.

Suffolk venues

Venues across the county that we recommend in Our Little Black Book include Haughley Park Barn, Otley Hall, Kenton Hall, Butley Priory, Wantisden Valley, Woolverstone Hall, The Tudor Barn Belstead, The Venue at Kersey Mill, Crow’s Hall, Nedging Hall, The Garden Barn, The Sancroft Barns, Boxted Hall, Shimpling Park Farm, Henham Estate and Wilderness Reserve.

If you are getting married at one of them and want to know how the catering actually works there — the kitchen, the access, the timings — ask us. It is the sort of thing we know and it is rarely on a venue’s own website.

Suffolk on the plate

The menus are not generically “local”. They are specifically Suffolk: Newmarket Musk sausages, Red Poll beef, glazed Suffolk ham, a ploughman’s with Shipcord and a hand-raised pork pie, Suffolk chicken supreme.

It is the strongest raw material we have and the hardest thing for a caterer from outside the county to fake. See the wedding menus.

Getting to you

Mickfield sits just off the A140 north of Stowmarket, which is central for Ipswich, Bury St Edmunds, Woodbridge, Framlingham and Sudbury, and a straightforward run to the coast.

The coast and the north of the county

Everything from Southwold and Walberswick up to Lowestoft and along the Waveney is within our range, and we cater there regularly. Ipswich and the Shotley peninsula are on our doorstep; Aldeburgh, Orford and the Deben are an easy run.

Two things change on the Suffolk coast. The wind decides whether the drinks reception happens outside, so we plan both versions and choose on the morning rather than hoping. And on a longer run north we will normally be on site the day before, because a two-hour drive on the morning of a wedding is how avoidable mistakes happen.

It is not only weddings up there. Beach and estuary sites take a lot of private parties and milestone birthdays through the summer, and the same field-kitchen thinking applies to all of them.

Venues that already recommend us

Five Suffolk venues list us on their own recommended or approved caterers pages. It is worth naming them, because unlike most things a caterer says about itself, you can go and check it:

• The Tudor Barn Belstead — one of five recommended caterers
• Haughley Park Barn — on the approved caterers list
• Boxted Hall — on the approved list, which at Boxted Hall you have to be
• Henham Park — a recommended supplier
• Woolverstone Hall — a recommended supplier

Several of those venues keep their lists deliberately short. A venue that recommends five caterers has usually worked with all five enough times to know how they behave at four o’clock on a Saturday.

We also cater at venues with no list at all, and in fields that are nobody’s venue. See marquee wedding catering.

Menus

The six wedding menus, all cooked on site wherever the day is:

• Canapé menus
• Wedding breakfast menus
• Sharing and feasting menus
• Barbecue and summer menus
• Evening and street food menus
• Vegan and vegetarian menus

Or see all six together, and buffets and sharing tables if you are not planning a seated meal.

Autumn and winter in Suffolk

Most people plan for June and the county is at its best then. But the autumn is the one worth knowing about: barns look better in low October light than in glare, venues are considerably easier to get, and the food is more interesting. Braises, game, proper puddings — the things nobody wants in a heatwave.

What an autumn wedding needs is heat and a plan for the ground. Both are straightforward if decided early and both are a scramble if left. See sharing and feasting menus, which suit a winter room better than anything plated.

Beyond weddings

Weddings are the biggest part of what we do here but not the whole of it. Through the winter a good deal of our Suffolk work is shoot lunches and elevenses on estates across the county. We also cater private parties, milestone birthdays, corporate events, funerals and wakes, and increasingly film and television units working on location.

And we run a restaurant here. The Outlook at Fox’s Marina in Ipswich is ours and open to the public, which is a useful thing for a Suffolk client — you can eat our food on a Saturday without booking us for anything at all.