How to Choose a Caterer in Lebanon

Start with the venue, not the menu

The single biggest constraint on what a caterer can serve you is not their skill — it is your venue. A rooftop in Achrafieh, a mountain guesthouse above Faraya and a family home in the Bekaa impose three completely different operations, and a menu that works beautifully in one can be impossible in another.

Before you talk about food, find out what your venue actually has. The answers change the quote more than any dish will.

• Is there a kitchen on site, and may the caterer use it?
• Is there three-phase power, or is a generator required — and who pays for it?
• How close can a van park to the service area, and is there a lift or only stairs?
• Is there running water and drainage for washing up?
• What time can the team arrive to set up, and what time must everything be cleared?
• Is there cover if it rains, and a plan for wind on an exposed terrace?

Make every quote say the same thing before you compare them

Two quotes with the same per-person number are almost never the same offer. One may include staff, rentals, service and clearing; the other may be food only, with everything else arriving as a second invoice three weeks later.

Ask each caterer to break the price into the same four lines: food, staff, equipment and rental, and service or delivery charges. Ask explicitly whether VAT is included. Then compare. You will often find the cheaper-looking quote is the more expensive one.

Do not ask a caterer to match a competitor's per-head figure without matching the inclusions too. A kitchen that agrees to an impossible number will make the difference back somewhere, and it is usually in the quality of the protein or the number of staff on the floor.

Ask how the food gets hot — the question almost nobody asks

This is the question that separates caterers who cook from caterers who transport. Food for two hundred people cannot simply be cooked at base and driven to a mountain venue; it has to be held at temperature, finished on site, or cooked in front of the guests.

There are three honest answers, and each is fine if it matches your event. Some food is cooked on site from raw. Some is prepared at base and finished at the venue — normal, safe and standard practice for mezze and cold courses. And some is cooked in front of guests at live stations, which is the format most Lebanese buffets are built around.

What you want to hear is a specific answer. What should worry you is vagueness, or a caterer who has not asked about the venue's power supply before quoting a menu that needs it.

Count the staff, not just the courses

Service quality is mostly a staffing question. A buffet that runs out of tongs, a bar with one person behind it, plates left on tables for forty minutes — these are the things guests remember, and they are all staffing, not cooking.

Ask how many service staff will be on the floor, how many are in the kitchen, and who is in charge on the night. Ask for the name of the person who will actually be at your event, because the person who sells you the wedding is frequently not the person who runs it.

As a rough sanity check for a seated Lebanese wedding, one service person per ten to fifteen guests is normal; a buffet with live stations needs fewer servers but more cooks. If a quote is far below that, the number is being made to work by cutting people.

Insist on a tasting, and bring the right people

Any caterer serious about a large event will offer a tasting. Ask whether it is free or credited against the booking, and ask for the tasting to include the dishes you are least sure about rather than only the ones they are proud of.

Bring whoever will be hardest to please. In Lebanon that is usually a parent or a grandparent, and their verdict on the kebbeh nayeh is worth more than any brochure.

Taste the things that travel badly, too. Anything fried, anything with pastry and anything that must be served hot is where a weaker kitchen shows itself.

Check they have done your size of event, in your kind of venue

A kitchen that is excellent at eighty covers in a restaurant is not automatically able to do four hundred in a field. Scale is a different discipline, and so is working somewhere with no infrastructure.

Ask for two references from events like yours — similar guest count, similar venue type, within the last year — and actually call them. Ask the reference one specific question: what went wrong, and how did the caterer handle it? Every event has a problem. The answer tells you what you need to know.

The paperwork questions

These are unglamorous and they matter. Get the answers in writing before any deposit changes hands.

• What is the deposit, and what part of it is refundable, and until when?
• When is the final guest count due, and what happens if numbers drop after that date?
• What is the cancellation and postponement policy — and does postponement carry the deposit over?
• Is the caterer licensed, and do they carry liability insurance?
• Who is responsible for leftovers, and for clearing rubbish from the venue?
• Is there a corkage or a restriction on bringing your own drinks?

Warning signs

None of these are automatically disqualifying. All of them are worth a direct question before you commit.

• A quote that arrives as a single number with no breakdown.
• No written contract, or a contract that does not name the guest count and the date.
• A refusal to do a tasting for a large event.
• Pressure to pay a large deposit immediately to 'hold the date'.
• No fixed address and no landline — a caterer with a real kitchen has a real place.
• A price far below everyone else's with the same inclusions. Somebody is absorbing that, and it will not be the caterer.

How long a caterer has been trading is a real signal

Lebanon is a hard country in which to run a food business. A kitchen that has traded through the war years, the currency collapse and the fuel crises has solved problems a newer operation has not had to face yet — how to keep a generator running, how to source when imports stop, how to hold a price when the exchange rate moves in a week.

It is not the only thing that matters, and there are excellent young caterers in Lebanon. But when two quotes look similar, longevity is a fair tiebreaker, and it is one of the few claims that cannot be manufactured.

Alam Catering has been catering Lebanese weddings and events since 1975 — but the point of this guide is that you should ask us the questions above exactly as you would ask anyone else.