On buffets and shared tables at functions

How to serve food

Last night there was a wedding related function. We call it a waleema. A home coming in other languages. But outside of south/south East Asian cultures, the functions are so large we might as well describe them as a wedding.

That's not the point.

The point is how food is served.

Typically, food will be served in a couple of different ways at functions like this[1].

On one side, you have buffets. You get up, sometimes according to a seating plan, go to the buffet, grab food, and sit down to eat (yes, that was a lot of commas).

On the other side which I most commonly associate with our Muslim culture in Sri Lanka[2], you sit down and the table gets multiple dishes. A large plate of rice or biriyani. A bowl of chicken/mutton/some meat. An assortment of vegetables cooked in different styles with at least one being cooked in coconut milk based gravy. The latter is usually a potato or cashew and green peas based dish. It's all served at the same table and each person serves from the same shared dishes. Usually you have a certain amount that is set down based on the number of people at each table (So a table of 10 may receive a bowl with about 10-12 pieces of chicken for example). You serve to your plate, pass the curry/pickle/salad/achchaaru/etc to the next person and the person on your other side will pass the dish they were serving from, to you. This goes on until all dishes have made their way around the table and everyone has served themselves. Want a little more? You just ask and the dish gets passed around to you and then you pass it back so it can be kept where there's space for it on the table.

But! That's also not The point.

The point is how the food is served affects the vibe.

Family meal vibes

Picture a dinner table at home with family sat around it[3]. "Can you pass me the chicken?". Voices all chattering from start to serving to finish. Hardly a break in between.

There is a certain warmth that comes when people sit at a table, have conversations, laughs, and then as the food is laid down, they all continue conversations while passing food around. You are connected to the shared meal that is at the table. The conversation doesn't halt. You don't get up and return at uncoordinated intervals. You all sit together until you've all eaten your fill. Dessert and all. Sure, at home there's some running up and down to move dishes around but in general, the vibe stays the same.

This morning I was thinking about how joyful it is when the functions are conducted in a similar manner. We sit down. We get talking. The food gets served. Everyone works together to share the dishes around the table. Younger folk assist the elderly by serving food onto their plates for them. "Tell me when to stop", we say to the uncle or aunty next to us. If you are seated with someone you don't know, conversation finds a way in as someone asks to pass food:

"Is there any more vegetable curry there? Please could you pass it?"

"No problem. Here it is"

A moment of laughter as we delicately maneuver the curry bowl from one person to the other until it has made its way down to the relevant person without anyone dipping their sleeves into their own plate of food

"Can I serve it for you?"

"Ohh thank you. Yes please"

"Did you take the chicken as well? It's good"

"No no. I didn't want to eat too much. You can have my piece if you want"

"I would hate to disappoint you by refusing"

More laughter as one of us grabs an extra piece of food

"Sorry. By the way, are you from the bride's side or the groom's side?"

And before you know it, you are swapping details about relatives and jobs and who knows who.

The shared table is a communal table. We partake in the meal together. The experience around the table is shared by default. We sit. We talk. We share. We finish together. And we rise together. Almost as one would at a family dinner table.

Not a science

I'm not saying this is impossible at the buffets. I've been to weddings where I've served from a buffet and then at the table I've leaned over and asked a person the same questions and got a conversation rolling. But, the default mode is for people to get up, join a line at their convenience, serve some food, maybe make small talk with someone while in line, and then return to the table. At which point someone else might be just getting up to go now that the line looks a little shorter. At a function where the food is obtained from the buffet, the table behaves a little more like a functional as a place to sit rather than as a place to experience something together. There's nothing intentional tying you to stay together at the table with the group of people you've sat with. There's no default to it.

It's not scientific. It's entirely vibe based. And if you haven't experienced it, it's very difficult to put into words. But once you do go through it a couple of times you tend to notice the difference. Especially when you are sitting with a few people you may not know. It's absolutely a tale of two servings.

And maybe I'm getting older. But when I think about the function held last night, I don't really recall the food. I remember the warmth of sharing it and offering my watalappam to someone else because I don't eat it myself. I remember telling my wife's nephew to eat his vegetables and laughing about what constitutes as actually eating vegetables vs nibbling on strands. I remember the little kid we didn't know initially who randomly joined our table and all of us ensuring that he was looked after even after his dad found him:

"Ayyo no problem, let him be here. We'll take care of him".

There's no precision that one can attach to an experience like this. One can only take a few minutes to save it in writing, pass it on, and hope that maybe someone else will try it out and possibly feel the same way you do about it. At which point, maybe the warmth of our table last night will extend further than just the event of yesterday. And I couldn't ask for anything more.

This blog doesn't have a comment box. But I'd love to hear any thoughts y'all might have. Send them to [email protected]

  1. Beyond this there are other ways depending on your cultural background. You may sometimes sit on the floor and be served food with something called a Savan, a single bowl full of rice which everyone eats from after adding separately served curries into it. You sit around it and eat with your hand from wherever you happen to be seated at next to the bowl (so, to your left and right there'll be a person eating a neighboring portion of rice). I realize the last one might put off some people but hey, the world is vast and the cultures are many. I've eaten at a wedding in India and functions in local Kovils. Every culture has their own typical approach. ↩︎

  2. It's worth noting that this kind of communal eating exists in many other cultures across the world. From the Arab world, to many countries in Africa, other South East/East Asian cultures, and Italian cultures. It's a global thing. But still deserving of a love letter to it. ↩︎

  3. This is of course assuming your family is functional. My condolences if not. Maybe the buffet is the better option in this case. ↩︎

Posted on January 21 2026 by Adnan Issadeen