Salma's Kitchen (819) 743-5953

Feeding a crowd

Middle Eastern and Armenian catering in the Fraser Valley

Cooked in Abbotsford, carried from Chilliwack to Vancouver

Salma's Kitchen is a family run Armenian and Middle Eastern caterer in Abbotsford, BC. We cook grilled mains, mezze, salads and dips for weddings, office lunches, celebrations of life and family gatherings, and we deliver across the Fraser Valley and into Metro Vancouver. Pickup from our kitchen is always an option. Ordering is by phone.

Call (819) 743-5953 See the menu
  • Cuisine Armenian and Middle Eastern. Grilled mains off the skewer, mezze dips, salads, rice and warm bread.
  • Kitchen Abbotsford, BC. Everything is cooked here for your date.
  • Service area Nine cities, from Chilliwack in the east to Vancouver in the west. Pickup from Abbotsford at no extra cost.
  • Events Weddings, office lunches, celebrations of life, birthdays, graduations, community hall gatherings.
  • To book Phone only. Call (819) 743-5953 with your date, guest count and the kind of event.
An overhead view of a shared table laid with grilled skewers, a bulgur and parsley salad, bowls of dips, warm flatbread, pickles and lemons on cream linen.

The food itself

What is Middle Eastern and Armenian catering?

It is a shared table rather than a plated meal. Grilled mains off the skewer, mezze dips, salads, rice and warm bread all arrive at once, and guests build their own plate from the middle of the table.

That structure is the difference between our catering and a Western buffet, and it is the reason a mixed room is easy to feed. A Western buffet starts with one centrepiece protein, so every dietary need becomes an exception. A mezze table starts with many dishes sharing the table, so most needs are covered before anybody asks.

A spread from our kitchen is built from three parts:

Armenian cooking shares a table with Levantine food without being the same thing, which is worth knowing when you are choosing a caterer: what makes Armenian food distinct covers where the two meet and where they part. For the long version of everything on this page, our plain guide to planning Middle Eastern catering in the Fraser Valley walks through a booking from the first phone call. The full menu lists every dish we cook.

Occasions

What kinds of events do you cater?

Weddings and engagements, office and staff lunches, celebrations of life, birthdays, graduation dinners, community hall gatherings, team windups and holiday parties. If people are sitting down together, the food works.

Weddings and engagements

Book earliest

Shared platters rather than a banquet line, which scales past a hundred guests without anyone feeling processed.

Wedding catering the planning guide

Team windups and fundraisers

Feeds a hungry room

Awards nights, school fundraisers and end of season dinners, where the plate has to satisfy a young crowd.

catering a team windup or fundraiser

Call (819) 743-5953

Service style

What is the difference between drop off catering and full service catering?

Drop off ends at your door: the food arrives ready to serve and you handle the rest. Full service adds people who set up, tend the table through the event and clear away after. Drop off is how most of our catering goes out, and your headcount and venue decide what yours needs.

Format What it means What you handle Suits
Drop off The kitchen cooks, packs the food on trays ready to serve, and delivers it. This is how most of our catering goes out. Set it out, serve it, and clear up afterwards. Your own plates and table. Home parties, office lunches and most gatherings up to a full room.
Buffet with setup The food is delivered and laid out on a serving table, with hot dishes held warm where the venue has no kitchen of its own. Host. Guests help themselves and you are not running the table. Halls and venues where the food sits out across a couple of hours.
Full service People stay for the event: they set up, keep the table stocked and safe, sometimes serve, and clear away after. Nothing on the day. Large or formal events. Ask what we can cover for your date rather than assuming either way.

The venue usually decides it for you. A home has a kitchen, plates and a table, so drop off is plenty. A community hall often has a serving kitchen rather than a cooking one, which means hot food needs holding once it arrives, and that is where setup earns its place. Tell us the headcount, the venue and how long people will be eating, and we will tell you plainly which format fits and how much of it we can cover. We wrote the whole comparison out in drop off catering or full service, which one your event actually needs, including what a chafing dish is and why halls ask about open flames.

Lead time

How far in advance should I book office lunch catering?

One to two weeks for an office lunch, and less once a lunch becomes a regular booking. Parties want two to four weeks, and a summer wedding deserves six to twelve months. The rule underneath all of it: call as soon as you know the date.

Kind of event Book this far ahead
Wedding, May to September Six to twelve months
Wedding, small or off season Three to six months
Large event, gala or milestone anniversary Four to six months
Office lunch or team meeting One to two weeks
Birthday, shower, graduation, family party Two to four weeks
Community hall event Whatever the hall booking allows, and tell us the hall
Celebration of life or memorial Days, by necessity. Call and we will work with it
Pickup platters and half kilo dips A few days

We ask for notice for one reason: catering is cooked for the day you booked. Nothing comes out of a freezer to fill a tray, so lead time is what lets us buy fresh, prep the dips and marinades properly, and put the grill on so everything is ready at once. The full breakdown lives in how far in advance you should book a caterer.

If your date is closer than the table suggests, call anyway. Too late happens later than people assume, and a drop off spread is far easier to produce at short notice than a staffed event. Here is what last minute catering in the Fraser Valley really looks like from inside our kitchen.

Grilled meat and chicken skewers resting on a stoneware platter with charred peppers, tomato, onion, chopped parsley, sumac and half a lemon.

Quantities

How much food do we need for 20, 50 or 100 guests?

We work it out with you on the phone rather than handing you a calculator. The starting point caterers use is roughly half a pound to a pound of total food per guest at a buffet, and a mezze table shifts some of that weight off the grill and onto the dips and salads.

What we actually go through with you is the headcount, how long the event runs, and the mix of grilled mains, salads and dips. A short lunch where people eat once sits at the low end of that range. A long evening where guests graze and go back for seconds sits at the high end. We plan on the generous side, because a short table is a worse problem than leftovers.

  • Around 20 to 25 guests. Two or three grill items, two salads, and a run of dips and bread that nobody has to ration.
  • Around 50 guests. The same shape, roughly doubled, with two to three mains so there is choice rather than just volume.
  • Around 100 guests. Now the serving format matters as much as the quantity, because a hundred people queueing at one table is a different event from a hundred people served from several.

The arithmetic, including what a mezze spread changes about the standard per person figures, is in how much Middle Eastern food you need per person and in catering for 20, 50 or 100 guests. Read either one before you call and the conversation gets much shorter.

Dietary needs

Can you cater vegetarian, vegan, halal and allergy needs?

Yes, and we answer these honestly rather than with a blanket yes. Much of the spread is already vegetarian and several dishes are vegan, so those guests eat from the main table rather than a separate plate. Halal and allergy questions we answer for your specific order.

  • Vegetarian. Hummus, baba ganoush, muhammara, tabouli, Armenian salad, rice and the grilled vegetable meal are all part of the normal spread, no special order required.
  • Vegan. The chickpea and eggplant dips, the salads and the grilled vegetables are plant based. Ayran is a yogurt drink, so vegan guests take hibiscus tea or lemonada instead.
  • Gluten. Grilled meats, rice and the salads without bulgur carry no wheat ingredients, while kibbe, tabouli, muhammara and bread do. We are a small kitchen rather than a certified gluten free facility, so for celiac guests we talk cross contact through openly before you order.
  • Halal. There is no pork anywhere on our menu: every meat dish is beef or chicken. We do not print a blanket halal claim, because sourcing is a supply question. Ask us about your order and we will tell you what we can confirm.
  • Allergies. Tell us the allergy, how severe it is and how many guests it affects on the first call, not the week of the event. That is what gives us time to plan properly.

Dish by dish, our guide to halal, vegetarian, vegan and gluten aware catering goes through each need in turn, and where sesame, nuts and dairy turn up in Middle Eastern cooking is the one to read if somebody at your table reacts to any of them.

Where we cook

Which cities do you cater in?

Nine, all reached from our Abbotsford kitchen: Abbotsford, Aldergrove, Mission, Langley, Chilliwack, Maple Ridge, Surrey, Burnaby and Vancouver. The closer you are, the more flexible we can be on notice and order size.

City Region Drive from our kitchen What that means in practice
Catering in Abbotsford Our home city, Fraser Valley This is where we cook Our home city. No distance minimum, and short notice is easier here than anywhere else.
Catering in Chilliwack Eastern Fraser Valley About 25 to 30 minutes east of our kitchen Comfortably within our regular range. Give us a little more lead time in peak summer.
Catering in Mission North of the Fraser About 20 minutes north of our kitchen One of the shortest runs we make. Short notice is often workable.
Catering in Langley Western Fraser Valley About 25 minutes west of our kitchen Well within our regular range. Weekday office drop offs here are a routine part of our week.
Catering in Aldergrove Between Abbotsford and Langley About 15 minutes west of our kitchen Among the closest areas we serve. Short notice requests are often possible.
Catering in Surrey Metro Vancouver, eastern edge About 40 minutes west of our kitchen Eastern Surrey and Cloverdale are closer than Newton and South Surrey. Larger orders are more practical at this distance.
Catering in Maple Ridge North of the Fraser, Metro Vancouver About 40 minutes from our kitchen A workable regular run via Mission. We ask for a little more lead time than in the core valley.
Catering in Burnaby Metro Vancouver About an hour west of our kitchen Best suited to larger events. Tell us your hard start time so we can plan around traffic.
Catering in Vancouver Metro Vancouver About an hour and ten minutes west of our kitchen Our longest run, suited to larger planned events rather than small drop offs.

Each city page carries the honest logistics for that drive, the events that actually happen there, and its own questions and answers. If you are further west, our guides to Vancouver wedding catering, Vancouver corporate lunches and office lunch catering in Langley are written for those rooms specifically, and Chilliwack acreage and backyard weddings covers the eastern end of the valley.

Getting the food to you

Do you deliver, or do I pick it up?

Both. We deliver across all nine cities with the food laid out ready to go straight onto your table, and pickup from our Abbotsford kitchen is always available at no extra cost. Pickup is usually the faster route at short notice.

Pickup from Abbotsford Delivery to your venue
Where it happens Our Abbotsford kitchen, at a time we agree on the phone. Your home, office or hall, anywhere in the nine cities listed above.
What it adds Nothing. Pickup is always available at no extra cost. The drive. Distance and timing are part of the conversation when you call.
What you get The same trays, packed to travel, plus a word about what to keep hot and what to keep cold. Grilled mains, mezze and salads laid out to go straight onto your table.
Timing You control it, which is why short notice is easiest this way. We plan backwards from your serving time, not from our schedule.
Best for Smaller orders, short notice, and anyone already coming through Abbotsford. Events where the host should be hosting rather than driving.

Either way the food arrives cooked for your date and ready to serve, so the family hosting is not stuck in a kitchen. If you are collecting, or driving the food on to a park or an acreage, two things are worth reading first: how to transport catered food safely and how to keep food hot and cold at an outdoor event. Both use the Health Canada and Fraser Health figures rather than our opinion.

Booking

How do you book catering with Salma's Kitchen?

By phone, on (819) 743-5953. There is no form and no automated system: you talk to our family, and we shape the spread with you on the call.

Have these five things roughly in mind and one call settles it:

  1. Your date, even if the rest is still moving.
  2. A rough guest count. Final numbers can wait.
  3. The kind of event, because a memorial and a wedding are planned differently.
  4. The venue, especially whether it is a home, an office or a hall.
  5. Any dietary needs in the group, including allergies.

We will tell you plainly what we can and cannot do for your date before you book, rather than after. Where a distance or a timeline does not work, we say so on the call.

Last updated August 2026

Before you call

Catering questions, answered

A table dressed for a gathering: cream linen, stoneware plates with folded napkins, plain glassware, unlit candles and a runner of olive branches.

Do you cater weddings in Surrey and Vancouver?

Yes. Surrey is about 40 minutes west of our Abbotsford kitchen and Vancouver about an hour and ten, so both are planned runs rather than casual ones, and a wedding is exactly the kind of event that earns the drive. Shared platters scale past a hundred guests without turning the room into a banquet line.

How much does catering cost?

It depends on your guest count, how much of the spread is grilled mains versus mezze, and whether you want drop off or more help on the day. We would rather talk it through on the phone than post a number that fits nobody. Call us with your headcount and occasion and we will walk you through it plainly.

Are you halal certified?

We do not hold a halal certification, and we will not print a blanket claim we cannot stand behind. What we can say plainly is that there is no pork anywhere on our menu: every meat dish is beef or chicken. If halal matters for your guests, ask about your specific order and we will tell you exactly what we can confirm at that time.

Can you cater a community hall that has no kitchen?

Yes, and it helps to tell us early. Many Fraser Valley halls have a serving kitchen rather than a cooking one, which changes how hot food is held once it arrives. Ask your hall about kitchen access, table space, power near the serving area and your cleanup deadline, then tell us what they said and we will shape the format around it.

Is there a minimum order?

We do not publish one. Close to home in Abbotsford there is no distance minimum, and pickup is always free. The further west we drive, into Surrey, Burnaby and Vancouver, the more a larger order makes sense. We will say so honestly on the phone rather than take a booking that works for neither of us.

Can you cater on short notice?

Often, yes, especially for a drop off spread close to home. The menu narrows on short notice because everything is cooked for your date rather than pulled from a freezer, but the food does not get worse. Celebrations of life are the clearest case: families rarely have lead time, and we arrange those quickly. Call before you rule it out.

From our kitchen to your table

Tell us your date, your guest count and the kind of event. We will shape the spread with you.

Call (819) 743-5953
Call to order (819) 743-5953