BOSTON— Catering food— Indian food– to thousands of people? How do you do that? Well, One World Cuisine, one of Boston’s oldest and largest Indian restaurant chains, does that every year at India Day at Hatch Shell in Boston.
INDIA New England News spoke with Amrik Pabla, president of Cambridge,MA-based One World Cusine, which owns and manages a number of Indian restaurants, including Diva, Indian Bistro, Mela, Bukhara, Dosa Factory and Bao Nation.
For over 30 years, One World Cuisine has provided Boston with distinctive culinary horizons from the Indian subcontinent. Over the years, OWC has grown to include diverse culinary concepts ranging from casual takeout, to fine dining and nightlife, to gourmet Indian groceries.
One World Cuisine’s locations can be found throughout the Greater Boston area, covering most neighborhoods in the city. Each restaurant provides dine-in, takeout and catering options.
Here are the excerpts:
INDIA New England News: Where do you start for such a big event?
Amrik Pabla: Well, the first step is to sit down with the event organizers and discuss the menu, how the food would be served, how much time will allotted to serve meal and other logistics. Once we have sorted those items, we focus on planning. A lot of things depend on planning.
INE: But for India Day, you decided the menu. Right?
AP: Yes, we do. Since India Day attracts people from various parts of India, we try to various types of regional foods from India. We plan the menu and try to cover every part of India.
INE: The next step?
AP: The next step is to try to plan the labor, number of cooks, servers and stalls. You really need a lot of manpower and infrastructure to serves thousands of people.
INE: What about cooking?
AP: We cook some food on the site and some foods are pre-cooked.
INE: How do you maintain the quality of the food?
AP: Quality of the food is everything. It has to be perfect, fresh and taste like they you remember eating while growing up.
INE: You guys do these big catering events. What about small ones?
AP: We cater for almost every occasion and every size. We do weddings, summer and graduation parties, parties, corporate events and you name an event. Also, we provide catering for a group of ten to thousands of people as you can see at India Day.
