Exquisite Events - Curating and Serving a Luxurious Indian Meal

Plated dinners have an undeniable WOW factor, but can be a bit tricky for Indian meals. Many of the dishes are very saucy and can be difficult to plate. There is also typically a mix of vegetarian and non-vegetarian guests. Continue reading to see our tips and tricks to having a flawless seated meal with examples from our recent wedding with 100 guests at a private residence.

It is important to be conscientious when curating the menu. Ideally, you want to devise a menu that complements the setting and is seamless to serve. You want to evoke all five senses during the wedding. To achieve this, the coordinator, caterer and wait staff must work hand in hand to provide ultimate experience for the guests.

Carefully consider the menu. Each item needs to be served at its intended temperature and must be presented in a way that is appealing and easy to consume. Pair courses that complement each other rather than compete with each other.

At a traditional Indian wedding, cocktail hour is heavy on appetizers and includes both stations and tray passed items. With this is mind, we suggest that the first seated course after cocktail hour is light. We served a refreshing palette cleanser at our recent wedding. Guests enjoyed a tamarind drink served in a delicate narrow shot glass, with pani puri on top. Other palette cleansers could be a fruit sorbet native to India such as mango, lemon or tangerine.

For the main course we did an Indian style thali with five small bowls of vegetarian options including yellow daal, crispy okra, vegetable koftas, methi matter malai and cucumber raita. This is the most elegant way to plate the items together without the sauces dripping into one another. The bowls held the temperatures of each of the dishes as some were served chilled and others hot. Because this wedding had a mix of vegetarian and non-vegetarian guests, we served all guests the vegetarian thali in unison and later had the wait staff bring out platters of lamb chops and Chilean sea bass filets to serve table-side to meat-eating guests.

For dessert, the bride wanted a Viennese dessert buffet, which later included slices of wedding cake. We also brought in a specialty coffee vendor who served drinks with the bride and groom’s initials atop. You can also consider serving the wedding cake to your guests as part of the seated dinner.

The ambiance in the room was romantic, with soft live music from the band, textured tablecloths, gorgeous centerpieces with varied pink florals, high and low candles to create interest and twinkle lights to set it over the top.

To achieve this, careful thought and planning was a necessity. We always suggest that you envision yourself as a guest when creating the perfect dining experience. Service is key, so it is extremely important to have thorough meetings with the caterer and wait staff. Set expectations for the flow of service and timing for each course. These teams working in conjunction are crucial to provide the guests with an exquisite dining experience. At this meeting, discuss the roles of each team, what the assembly line will look like in terms of prepping or cooking the items, plating the food and serving the food cohesively at the desired temperatures. For our one hundred guest wedding, we had twenty wait staff, carrying food on both hands, to ensure that guests were all served their meals in unison.

We next transitioned after the formal dinner into a fun, festive and upbeat soiree. The bar opened up with specialty cocktails honoring the bride and groom’s taste. We had three bartenders for our guest count to ensure that guests weren’t crowding the bar or waiting too long for a cocktail. The live band transitioned off and a DJ moved into party music that got the guests onto the dance floor for the remainder of the evening.