Small Dinners in Brooklyn
Eight to forty guests, never more. Supper clubs, micro-weddings and apartment gatherings — planned so the person hosting gets to sit down at their own table.
We Only Do Small, and That Is the Whole Idea
Small Hours started in 2019 when our founder — a line cook who kept getting asked to cater friends' dinner parties — noticed that every event company in New York wanted the hundred-and-fifty-person wedding and treated a dinner for fourteen as barely worth quoting.
So we only do small. Eight to forty guests, never more. That constraint changes everything: we can cook in a domestic kitchen, we can seat everyone at one table, we can plan an evening around who is actually coming rather than around a floor plan.
Four hundred and eighty evenings later, the thing people book us for most is not the food. It is that the host gets to sit down.
- ✓Eight to forty guests, never more — it is a hard limit
- ✓We cook in your kitchen, however small it is
- ✓One table wherever the room allows it
- ✓480 evenings across Brooklyn and Manhattan since 2019
Evenings We Plan
All of them small, most of them at one table.
If your number is over forty, we will happily recommend someone. Small is not a starting point for us, it is the practice.
Four Things That Only Work Under Forty
One table, one conversation
Above about forty, a room splits into separate conversations and the evening becomes a party. Under it, everyone can hear everyone — which is a completely different and much rarer thing.
A domestic kitchen is enough
We cook for fourteen out of a galley kitchen regularly. It means your apartment is a venue, which removes the single biggest cost in New York entertaining.
The menu can follow the room
At this size we cook to the actual guests — the vegetarian, the allergy, the one who does not drink — rather than offering a chicken-or-fish choice made six weeks earlier.
Pace is possible
With forty people you can hold a course, let a conversation run, and land dessert when the room is ready. With two hundred you are running a timetable.
Four Hundred and Eighty Small Nights
Apartments, rooftops and one very small restaurant, across Brooklyn.
What We Bring
Standard from host-for-hire through the full evening.
The table itself
Trestles, linen, glass, ceramic and candles. Most New York apartments do not own a table for sixteen, and they do not need to.
Furniture moved and returned
Your sofa goes to a neighbour's or into the hall for the night and comes back before morning. It is included, not an extra.
A menu written for the actual guests
Allergies, the vegetarian and the one who does not drink are designed into the menu, not accommodated with a side dish.
Wine chosen to the food
Three or four bottles that go with what we are cooking, sourced locally. We will also happily pour whatever you already have.
Service paced to the room
We hold a course when a conversation is good and move when the room is ready. This is the part that only works small.
The kitchen left clean
Cleaner than we found it, every time. Nobody wakes up to their own dinner party.
The Cheapest Room in New York Is the One You Already Pay For
Venue hire is the single largest line in almost every New York event budget, and for a gathering of twenty it is frequently the whole reason people do not host at all.
We have cooked for fourteen out of galley kitchens, seated twenty-two in a Williamsburg loft and put eleven around a table in a one-bedroom in Greenpoint. It works because we bring the table, we move your furniture out and back, and we cook to what the kitchen can actually do rather than to a menu written for a commercial one.
It is also, in our experience, a warmer evening than any restaurant private room — because people behave differently in somebody's home.
- ✓No venue hire, which is usually the largest line
- ✓We bring the table, the linen, the glass and the candles
- ✓Furniture moved out and returned before morning
- ✓Cooked to your kitchen's real capability, not a commercial one
From a Message to the Small Hours
Most evenings come together in three to five weeks.
Tell us the number
How many, roughly when, and where — including if 'where' is your apartment and you are not sure it works. It usually does.
We come and look
Twenty minutes at the space. We measure, look at the kitchen, and tell you honestly what is possible in it.
A menu and a fixed price
Written for your actual guests, with wine to match. One number, including the table, the furniture move and the cleaning.
You sit down
We arrive early, cook, pour, pace the evening and clean the kitchen. You are a guest at your own table.
Tell Us How Many People
Eight to forty, anywhere in Brooklyn or Manhattan — including your own apartment. We'll come and look, then send a menu and a fixed price within three business days.
What Hosts Ask Us
Is my apartment really big enough?
Almost certainly, and more so than you think. We've seated eleven in a Greenpoint one-bedroom and twenty-two in a Williamsburg loft. We'll come and measure for free, look at the kitchen, and tell you honestly what number works in your space.
What does a small evening cost?
Guest count and the menu drive it, and skipping venue hire usually makes it far less than people expect. Tell us the number and what you'd like to spend and we'll say plainly what's achievable — we'd rather do that than build a quote you were never going to accept.
Can you cook in my kitchen? It's tiny.
Yes. Our founder is a line cook and we've cooked for fourteen out of galley kitchens more times than we can count. We write the menu around what your kitchen can actually do, which is the trick — not around what a commercial one could.
What if we're more than forty people?
Then we're not the right people, and we'll recommend someone good. Small isn't a starting point for us — above forty the room splits into separate conversations and it becomes a different kind of evening that other companies do better.
What's host-for-hire?
You cook, we run everything else — the table, the pacing, the wine, the clearing, the door and the kitchen afterwards. It's our smallest package and quietly our most loved, particularly by people who actually like cooking but never get to sit down.
We want a micro-wedding. Do you do ceremonies?
We plan the evening; we don't officiate. What we're good at is treating it as a very good dinner that happens to have a ceremony in the middle — no aisle, no seating chart, no receiving line, unless you want them.
Tell Us How Many People
Eight to forty, anywhere in Brooklyn or Manhattan. We'll come and look at the space for free, then send a menu and a fixed price within three business days.