Ask for Indian catering almost anywhere and you get the same menu: butter chicken, tandoori, dal makhani, biryani, naan. It is good food and it is also one region playing its best-known songs.
The map is much wider than the menu. Kerala cooks seafood with coconut and curry leaf. Hyderabad has its dum biryani, layered and sealed. Goa carries a Portuguese inheritance in its vinegars and its pork. Bengal builds on fish and lentils, Kashmir on rogan josh, Gujarat on a thali of many small things, Rajasthan on dal baati churma. The north leans on cream and breads; the south on rice, coconut and heat.
It is the easiest way to feed a mixed room well. Vegetarian and vegan cooking is native to the cuisine rather than a substitution within it — an Indian menu does not have to invent a vegan main, it already has twenty. That is a rare thing for a catering brief where half the invite list has a dietary line next to their name.
Heat is set at the pan, not at the table. A menu built for a Vancouver office and the same menu built for a family gathering are seasoned differently on purpose, and diluting a finished dish to make it milder ruins it. Tell us the room and the heat is built in from the start rather than apologised for afterwards.
Regional does not mean obscure. It means the dish comes from somewhere specific and is cooked that way, instead of everything converging on the same gravy. Guests notice that immediately, even when they cannot name what is different.
If you want a menu that reads beyond the familiar, say so at the enquiry — that is a conversation with the kitchen, not a checkbox on a form.
