Five cuisines, one evening: the quiet art of the multi-station feast
When one menu can't carry the whole room, live stations do. A short guide to designing a multi-cuisine evening that still feels considered.
The hardest brief in catering isn't a tasting menu. It's the family wedding with 600 guests, four generations, six diets, and grandparents who would like the food they actually grew up eating. The answer is rarely one menu. It's a route through several.
◆Why live stations work
A station puts the chef in front of the guest. The food is finished to order — never sitting under a lamp — and the room feels alive. Done well, four or five stations let you cover Continental, South Asian, Levantine, Pan-Asian and patisserie in one evening without anything feeling like a buffet.
◆Design the floor first, the menu second
Stations only work if guests can move. We plan flow before food: where the bar sits, where the queue lines form, where the photographers don't get caught in steam. The menu adapts to the floor plan — not the other way around.
See the full Live Counters menu
Course by course →- ◆One signature station guests must visit — not optional, not skippable.
- ◆Two regional stations to satisfy the family palate.
- ◆One light station for grazers and second servings.
- ◆A patisserie close — always last, always plated.
“Stations are theatre. The food has to be perfect, but the show is what people post about the next morning.”
