Housewarming Catering in Toronto: Feeding People in a House With No Kitchen Set Up

Your kitchen is in boxes and forty people are coming. Cater it. Here is exactly what to order.

The housewarming is the one party where you are guaranteed not to have a working kitchen. Half your pans are in a box, you do not know where the serving spoons are, and forty people are coming to look at your new place.

Do not cook. At all.

This is not the event to prove anything. You have just moved house, which is one of the most exhausting things a person does. Cater the whole thing and spend the evening actually showing people around.

Order food that needs nothing from you

You want food that arrives ready, holds heat in its own trays, and needs no plating, no finishing and no oven. Biryani, curries and rice are exactly this. Delivered hot in chafing dishes, they are self-sufficient for hours.

Avoid anything that needs reheating. Your oven may not even be hooked up.

Get delivery with setup

Pay for it. This is the event where setup is worth every dollar, because you do not know where anything is. Let someone else arrive, lay it out, and leave it ready.

Disposables are fine

Nobody is judging your plates at a housewarming. Good disposable plates and cutlery mean you are not washing up at midnight in a kitchen you have not organised yet.

Keep the menu short and generous

One biryani, two curries, a vegetable dish, something fresh. It looks abundant, it feeds everyone, and it does not require you to think.

Booking

We are a family-run halal Sri Lankan and Indian kitchen in Scarborough. Catering starts at 20 dollars per person with a 20-guest minimum, and we deliver and set up across the GTA. See the catering page, or read delivery vs pickup to decide which you want.

See our party catering page. Whole fried chicken is an easy crowd pleaser for a housewarming.

How our catering actually arrives

A quick correction to the idea of a caterer who sets everything up: our catering is drop-off or pickup only. We do not send staff, and there are no on-site cooking. The food comes packed and ready to serve. For a housewarming that is fine, as long as you plan the ten minutes after the door opens. That plan is below.

The ten-minute setup in a half-unpacked house

1. Choose the table the night before. A folding table against a wall works. Keep it away from the stairs and the boxes.
2. Buy chafing racks and fuel. They are cheap, need no power, and do not depend on an oven that may not be connected yet.
3. Find a lighter. It is always in a box you have not opened.
4. Put one serving spoon in each tray. Disposable is fine.
5. Line the order up: rice, then meat, then vegetables and sambal, then dessert at the far end.

What to order for 40 people

Chicken Biryani Combo 2 is $25 per person and includes chicken biryani, deep-fried chicken, pineapple curry, eggplant mojo, acharu, maasi sambal, green-pea cashew curry and custard dessert. For 40 guests, 40 x $25 = $1,000 before tax and delivery. If many of the new neighbours are vegetarian, split it 20 and 20 with the Vegetable Biryani Combo at $15: 20 x $25 plus 20 x $15 = $800.

Combos have a 20-person minimum. For a smaller housewarming, ask about trays: small feeds 5 to 8, medium 10 to 15, large 20 to 30, priced on quote.

Leftovers when the fridge is full of moving-day snacks

Hot food should be packed away within two hours. If the fridge is not running yet or is packed, use a cooler with ice for the leftover rice and curries, and send containers home with guests. Biryani and curries reheat well the next day; fried chicken is best reheated in an oven or air fryer to keep it crisp.

A note for the neighbours

A housewarming often brings new neighbours you have never cooked for. Label the vegetarian trays, and mention that the green-pea cashew curry contains cashews and the custard contains egg, so nobody has to ask.

Housewarming questions

Do you deliver to new subdivisions?

Give us the full address and a phone number for the person at the door. New streets sometimes do not show up correctly on maps yet.

Can I pick up instead?

Yes. Pickup is from 328 Passmore Avenue, Unit 59, Scarborough, on Saturday and Sunday. See delivery vs pickup, or call (647) 449-2924.