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Where meat belongs on a menu built around vegetables

Not a compromise and not the centre of the plate. How we think about proportion, quality and cooking it for a crowd.

A kitchen known for bowls and greens gets asked this often enough to be worth answering plainly: yes, we cater meat, and no, it is not an afterthought.

The question is proportion, not permission. Meat as the anchor of a plate rather than the whole of it means the vegetables have to be good enough to carry their share, which is the harder half of the job and the half most catering skips. Get that right and a smaller portion of a better piece of meat reads as more generous, not less.

Cooking protein for a hundred people is a timing problem. Carryover heat keeps working after a tray leaves the oven, so anything cooked to temperature in the kitchen arrives past it. Large-format cuts that rest and slice well are more forgiving than small pieces that dry out in a chafing dish, which is why the menu for a buffet should not simply be the plated menu in a bigger tray.

Separation is a kitchen decision, not a table one. Vegetarian, vegan and meat dishes cooked with shared equipment are not separated by being placed apart on a table. If separation matters for your room — and for many rooms it does — say so at booking, because it changes prep, boards and order of service.

Label it and let people choose. Everything carries its markers, so a guest can read a spread without interviewing anyone about what is in the tray. That is the entire trick to feeding a mixed room without anyone feeling singled out.

If your event needs halal, or needs meat and vegetarian kept strictly apart, tell us at the enquiry and we will be straight about what we can guarantee.

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