Birthday cake, and everything else

Cake

Bring it, tell us when you book, and hand it to whoever meets you at the door. It goes to the kitchen, it comes back cut and plated with whatever it needs, and there is a $4 a head charge for the plates, the cutting and the washing up. If you want candles, say so — we have them.

Daniel bakes everything on the pudding list here and has never once minded somebody bringing a cake from elsewhere. A birthday cake is somebody's mother's recipe more often than it is a bakery box, and that is a good reason to be in a restaurant rather than a bad one.

Everything else, no

We cannot serve food we did not make or store. That is not us being precious: a restaurant is responsible for everything that leaves its kitchen, and we cannot take responsibility for a dish that spent two hours in a car. It applies in the private room too, where people ask most often, and it applies to a tray of sandwiches for a meeting exactly as much as it applies to a hot main course.

The one grey area, answered

Baby food and formula, obviously yes, and we will warm it. A specific medical food somebody has to eat, yes — tell us and we will find a sensible way to handle it. Those are not what this rule is about, and nobody is going to be difficult with a parent at a table.