Durham Town Hall is a lovely venue; it is situated in the heart of the city and has two beautiful function rooms. Despite this however there is one main issue with the venue in terms of catering, it has a very sensitive smoke alarm, a nightmare for cooking food on the premises.
This particular job at the Town Hall was a wedding reception. The bride and groom had picked their choice of food having studied our range of online menus. Unfortunately however their choice of catering had to be altered slightly in order to prevent the smoke alarm from ruining their evening.
The food was a mixture of both hot and cold buffet options with hot pork sandwiches and hot beef sandwiches also being served. The hot buffet included lasagne with garlic bread, Chinese curry with rice, veggie kebabs and roast potatoes. The cold buffet included quiche, salad, pasta salad, oriental snacks and open Danish sandwiches.
It wasn’t the hot and cold buffet options that caused the complication it was the pork sandwiches and beef sandwiches. Usually our pork and beef are carved at the venue and served straight from either the joint or the hog roast, producing a lot of heat and sometimes smoke. In order to prevent the smoke alarms from sounding the meat had to be carved at the company’s head quarters prior to the event and transported in a heat insulating container, however this proved to work out very well.
Despite this minor complication the event was still a great success and was enjoyed by all guests. Because the Town Hall has two beautiful function rooms it is quite simple to set up the catering requirements at this venue.
The two rooms are separated by a door; therefore you can use one room to lay out the food and another to hold the function. In this instance the larger, older room was used to hold the actual reception, this room is full of character and is a great room for a function. The smaller more modern room was used to lay out the buffet and to serve the food.
Using the two rooms in this way not only allowed the couple and their guests to utilise the room available to them but it also meant there was little disturbance in the function room. The guests were busy entering the function room and congratulating the happy couple as we were setting up next door. This was perfect, there were no members of staff having to navigate themselves across the dance floor carrying tables and struggling to set up in the dark in the corner, it was perfect.
When it came to the agreed time the door between the two rooms was opened and guests were notified that the food would be served. They all helped themselves to the buffet as three members of staff helped serve the hot sandwiches and the hot buffet. Although this room was smaller than the function room, guests were wise enough to know not to come all at once, this made service easier and meant the room wasn’t cramped.
Overall this event was a roaring success.
After the complications with the smoke alarm this could have potentially been a difficult job to try and organise. However the layout of the venue, the organisation of the company and its staff and the attitude of the happy couple and their guests helped this event run smoothly.
Durham Town Hall Catering: Wedding Caterers
Durham Town Hall Catering
Event details: Wedding reception at Durham town hall
Guests: 125
Menu: Combination menu
Hog roast sandwiches - Roast beef sandwiches - Hot buffet menu 22 -
Fork Buffet Menu 18
The bride and groom originally requested a hog roast combined with our hot buffet menu 22 but the fire alarm system at the town hall in Durham City is to sensitive so as an alternative we provided a pre carved hog roast and roast beef in chafing dishes, as you can see in the photos above this concept works very well at the town hall venue.
