Italian Banquet Company provides authentic Italian wedding, event and self-catering house catering across Perthshire, Tayside and Scotland — with bespoke menus and full vegan and gluten-free options.
Imagine your guests arriving at a Highland farmhouse on a warm September evening. The long table is already laid — antique linen, hand-painted ceramics, candles flickering in wine bottles. Tomato bruschetta on toasted sourdough. Wheels of burrata waiting to be torn open. The aroma of slow-braised ragù drifting from the kitchen. This is what an Italian banquet feels like in the Scottish countryside — and it's quietly becoming the catering choice for weddings, milestone birthdays and corporate gatherings across Perthshire, Tayside and beyond.
At Italian Banquet Company, we bring authentic regional Italian cooking to Scotland's most beautiful venues, holiday houses and self-catering properties. Every menu is hand-built around the occasion, prepared from scratch using the finest Scottish produce paired with traditional Italian craft. Whether you're planning a twenty-guest celebration weekend or a two-hundred-guest wedding, this guide walks you through the services, the regions, the dietary options and the questions clients ask us most.
Why Italian banquet catering works so well in Scotland
Scotland and Italy share more than people realise. Both cultures gather around long tables. Both believe a generous welcome is half the meal. Both prize ingredients that come from the land closest to where the food is served — and Scotland's larders happen to suit Italian cooking beautifully. Wild Highland venison rests perfectly into a slow ragù. Ayrshire dairy makes a richer burrata than most Italian regions can claim. East Coast langoustines, Tayside soft fruit, Perthshire mushrooms — these are the ingredients an Italian chef dreams of. We go into this in A Scottish Summer Larder.
What sets Italian banquet catering apart from typical wedding or event catering isn't just the food. It's the rhythm. Sharing plates instead of plated portions. Antipasti that invite conversation. A second course that arrives when guests are ready, not on a schedule. Wine glasses that get topped up by hand. The meal becomes the entertainment — and your guests remember the night for the right reason.
Our catering coverage across Scotland
Italian Banquet Company works across Perthshire, Tayside, Angus, Fife, Edinburgh, Glasgow, the Highlands, the Cairngorms and the wider Scottish Borders. We routinely cater at Highland holiday houses and estates, Perthshire self-catering properties and country lodges, private venues in Edinburgh and Glasgow, Scottish wedding venues, castles and barns, corporate events, and festival and pop-up sites. Recent venue write-ups include Drumkilbo House, Alexander House, Glamis Castle and Mar Lodge.
Distance is rarely the issue — for the right event, we'll travel anywhere in mainland Scotland. What matters more is whether the venue suits the kind of unhurried, generous meal an Italian banquet is meant to be.
The services we offer
Italian Banquet Company is structured to handle five clear types of event, each with its own approach.
Wedding catering is our largest service. We design and deliver full Italian wedding feasts — from welcome canapés through antipasti, primi, secondi, dolci and late-night sharing boards. We work with the venue, the florist and the planner; we bring our own team, equipment and serviceware where needed.
Banquet catering for milestone celebrations — significant birthdays, anniversaries, retirements, engagement parties. The format is intentionally informal: long tables, sharing platters, bottles passed around. More in Catering for Milestone Birthdays & Anniversaries.
Corporate event catering and banqueting — for companies wanting an experience that isn't another beige hotel buffet. See Corporate Events in Scotland: Beyond the Function-Suite Buffet.
Self-catering house and holiday property catering — possibly the most natural fit for Italian cooking. You've rented a beautiful house in Perthshire with twelve friends. We come to the kitchen, take it over, cook and serve a banquet that uses the house as it was meant to be used. Here is exactly how that works.
Multi-day catering stays — for occasions that deserve more than one meal. A welcome dinner on Friday, lazy brunch on Saturday, formal banquet that evening, Sunday lunch before everyone heads home. A week at Kinblethmont House is a good example.
Italian vegan and gluten-free banquets — done properly
Most caterers treat dietary requirements as a problem to be solved at the edges of the menu. We treat them as a chance to show off how rich Italian cooking actually is — the reasoning is set out in Feeding Everyone at the Table.
Traditional Italian cuisine is full of dishes that are naturally vegan: pasta e fagioli, ribollita, caponata siciliana, panzanella, minestrone, pasta alla Norma (with a small adjustment), and dozens of vegetable antipasti that need no compromise. Our Italian vegan banquet menu isn't a separate page hidden away — it's a full, generous feast that vegan guests get excited about and non-vegan guests happily share.
The same is true for gluten-free Italian catering. Risotto in all its forms — milanese, with mushrooms, with seafood, with seasonal vegetables. Polenta-based courses, including grilled polenta with melted Taleggio. Antipasti boards built around cured meats, cheeses, olives and roasted vegetables. Slow-cooked secondi like osso buco or braised short rib, served with creamy polenta instead of bread. Italian dolci can be just as easily gluten-free — flourless chocolate torta, panna cotta, semifreddo, fresh fruit with almond cream.
If you have guests with multiple dietary requirements — vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, nut allergies — we build a menu where everyone eats from the same table, not separate plates pushed to one side.
Catering at self-catering houses in Perthshire and beyond
This is one of the most common bookings we take, and it's worth describing in detail because it's also one of the easiest things to get wrong if you hire the wrong caterer.
You've booked a beautiful self-catering property — a Highland lodge, a Perthshire farmhouse, a converted barn near Pitlochry — for a special weekend with family or close friends. You don't want to spend the time cooking. You don't want a chain restaurant menu. You want the holiday-house experience guests rave about for years.
Here's how we handle it. Before the event, we agree the menu, guest count and dietary needs. We arrive at the house several hours before service with all the produce, equipment and serviceware required. We take over the kitchen quietly and respectfully. We cook, we serve, we top up wine, we clear and clean. By the time you'd normally start washing up after a dinner party, we've gone — and the kitchen looks the way you found it.
We've catered at properties from intimate four-bedroom cottages to twenty-bed estates. The smaller the property, the more we lean into discreet service. The larger the gathering, the more our team scales up. Either way, the house feels like yours throughout.
How an Italian banquet is costed
Every event is quoted individually, because what it takes is shaped by more than a headcount. The things that move it are: the number of guests, the shape of the menu and how many courses it runs to, the service style (plated versus sharing), how many chefs and front-of-house staff the day needs, what the venue kitchen already has and what we bring, how far the brigade travels, and the seasonality of specific ingredients.
For self-catering house catering in particular, the work of setting up a remote kitchen, transporting everything and breaking down afterwards is broadly the same for ten guests as for twenty — so smaller groups are shaped differently from large ones.
We build the menu with you first, then send a clear, itemised quote covering the menu, service style, number of courses, staffing, equipment and serviceware, travel and any additional services. Nothing is added to an invoice later. Our wedding catering FAQs answer this and the other questions couples ask most.
Recent events we've catered
A small selection, anonymised for client privacy.
A Perthshire wedding for ninety-five guests at a private estate. Welcome aperitivi on the lawn, four-course Italian wedding banquet under a marquee, late-night porchetta sandwiches at midnight. Three of the guests had separate dietary requirements; all three had multiple courses they were excited about.
A 60th birthday weekend at a holiday house outside Pitlochry. Twelve guests, three days, six meals. Friday welcome dinner of antipasti and pasta. Saturday lazy lunch followed by a formal banquet that evening with a slow-roasted lamb shoulder centrepiece. Sunday brunch before guests headed home.
A corporate retreat in the Highlands for a Scottish technology company. Forty guests, sit-down banquet on the second night, Italian regional themes paired with a curated wine flight. The brief was make this the night people remember from the trip — which it became.
Frequently asked questions
How is Italian banquet catering priced in Perthshire and Scotland? Every event is quoted individually. The cost is shaped by guest count, the shape of the menu, service style, staffing, the venue kitchen and travel. We build the menu with you first and then send a clear, itemised quote before anything is confirmed.
Do you cater at self-catering houses and holiday properties? Yes — this is one of our most-booked services. We bring all equipment, ingredients and team to your property, cook in the house kitchen, serve the meal and clean down before leaving. We work at properties across Perthshire, Tayside, the Highlands and wider Scotland.
What's the difference between Italian banquet catering and a regular wedding caterer? A regular wedding caterer typically delivers individually plated courses on a tight schedule. An Italian banquet leans into sharing platters, generous portions, unhurried timing and the family-style table that becomes the heart of the evening. The food itself is also genuinely Italian — built from regional traditions, prepared from scratch — rather than Italian-influenced.
Can you accommodate vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free and other dietary requirements? Yes, fully. Italian cuisine has more naturally vegan and gluten-free dishes than most regional cuisines, so we build inclusive menus where every guest eats from the same table rather than receiving a separate "alternative."
How far in advance should we book Italian catering? For weddings and large events, six to twelve months in advance is typical, especially for peak season from May to September. For smaller gatherings or self-catering house catering, four to eight weeks is usually sufficient — though earlier is always safer.
Do you provide staff, serviceware, equipment and drinks service? Yes. We bring chefs and front-of-house team, all cooking equipment, and we can provide serviceware and table setup as required. Glassware is usually hired directly by the client through their venue or a specialist supplier, and most clients prefer to handle their own drinks supply the same way.
Do you cater outside Perthshire? Yes — we cater across Tayside, Angus, Fife, Edinburgh, Glasgow, the Highlands, the Cairngorms and the wider Scottish Borders. For events outside this radius, we're happy to discuss feasibility.
Can we taste the menu before booking? Tastings are arranged case by case depending on the wedding, the menu and the location. For larger events and bespoke menus we can usually arrange one before the final menu is signed off. Please ask when you enquire.
Do you cater for large weddings of 100+ guests? Yes. Our team scales for events from intimate gatherings of ten to weddings of up to two hundred guests.
Related reading
- For Any Occasion: A Kitchen That Travels
- How It Works at a Self-Catering Country House or Private-Hire Venue
- Rolled by Hand, On Site, On the Day: Our Pasta
- A Week at Kinblethmont House, Arbroath
- Lickleyhead Castle, Aberdeenshire
- Intimate Weddings on Loch Ness & Around Inverness
- Beyond Scotland: Destination Events & Our Romania Residency
- Christening & Family Celebration Catering in Scotland
Ready to plan your Italian banquet?
If you're planning a wedding, milestone birthday, corporate event or holiday-house celebration in Perthshire or anywhere across Scotland, we'd love to hear about it. Tell us the date, the venue, the rough guest count and what kind of evening you're imagining — we'll come back with a tailored proposal within two working days.
This is what we do, and we love doing it. Let's make your event one your guests talk about for years.
