There is a strange gap in the North London venue market.
If you are throwing a party for a hundred people, you are spoilt for choice. Halls, function rooms, whole floors of bars. If you want a table for six, any restaurant will do.
But somewhere between fifteen and thirty guests, it gets difficult. Too many for a normal table. Not enough to justify a room built for a hundred. And almost everywhere you look, the food is an afterthought to the space.
Here is what is actually worth knowing if that is the party you are planning. And if you would rather skip ahead, our private dining room in Hampstead seats 9 to 26, costs £39 a head, and there is no room hire fee.
Typical North London Minimum Spend
Room Hire At Bonoo
Guests In Our Room
The Two Costs Nobody Mentions Upfront
Most birthday venues in North London quote you one number and charge you two.
The first is room hire, a flat fee for the space, typically £200 to £500 in this part of London and considerably more in central. The second is minimum spend, which is what your group has to spend on food and drink before the venue is happy.
Some places charge both. A £300 hire fee and a £600 minimum spend means your party of twenty starts at £900 before anyone has decided what they are drinking.
It is always worth asking the question plainly. Is there a room hire fee on top of the minimum spend? The answer varies enormously and it rarely appears on the website.
For what it is worth, we do not charge room hire at all. Our minimum is £39 per person on food, and that is the whole of it.
Is It Actually A Private Room?
This is the question that catches people out most often.
"Private dining" can mean a room with a door that closes. It can also mean a corner of the main restaurant with a screen wheeled across it, or a mezzanine overlooking a busy bar.
Both are sold the same way. They are very different birthdays.
A screened area does not stop noise. If you are hoping for speeches, or a toast, or simply a conversation that runs the length of the table, a partition will not give you that on a Friday night.
Ask directly: is there a door? Is the room on a different floor? Will anyone else be in it?
Ours is downstairs, with its own entrance and its own staircase, entirely separate from the restaurant above. Once your group is in, the space is yours.
Six Questions Worth Asking
Most birthday disappointments come from things nobody thought to ask. These are the ones that matter.
Is there a room hire fee on top of the minimum spend?
The single most common surprise. Ask before you fall in love with the room.
Does the minimum spend include drinks?
A £40 food minimum with a separate bar tab is a very different evening to £40 all in. Neither is wrong. You just need to know which you are agreeing to.
How long is the room ours?
Some venues run two sittings. Being asked to leave at nine is not what most people picture when they book a birthday.
Can we bring a cake and decorations?
Most places say yes. A few charge corkage on cake, which is worth discovering now rather than on the night.
Is the deposit refundable?
Plans change, particularly with larger groups. Ask what happens if you need to cancel and how much notice you need to give.
How are dietary requirements handled?
Any group of twenty will include vegetarians, vegans and allergies. Ask whether those guests get a proper alternative or a plate of sides.
Why Sharing Food Works For A Birthday
There is a practical argument for sharing plates at a party, beyond the fact that they taste good.
Twenty people each receiving an identical plate at the same moment is efficient. It is not especially celebratory. Everyone eats, nobody talks across the table, and the meal is over in forty minutes.
Dishes arriving in the middle of the table do something different. People reach across each other, pass things down, argue about the last piece of something. It keeps the table talking, which is rather the point of a birthday.
It also handles dietary requirements far more gracefully. With Indian tapas, there is always something on the table that suits everyone, rather than one guest being handed a separate plate while the rest are served.
Milestone Birthdays Need Slightly More
A 30th, 40th or 50th birthday tends to carry more weight than an ordinary one, and the venue has to match that.
Three things make the difference.
Somewhere people can hear each other. If there is going to be a speech, or a toast, or a slideshow someone has spent a fortnight making, the room has to allow for it.
Time. Milestone birthdays run long. People arrive, drift, sit down, get up again. A three-hour booking is the minimum you want, and it is worth asking what happens if it overruns.
Something that feels like an occasion. Candlelight rather than strip lighting. A room that has been thought about. Guests notice, even if they never mention it.
Birthdays At Bonoo
Our private dining room is downstairs at our Hampstead restaurant on Finchley Road, with its own door and its own staircase. It seats 9 to 26.
There is no room hire fee. The minimum is £39 per person on food, which for a group of twenty comes to £780. That sits comfortably below what most North London venues charge once hire and minimum spend are added together. Drinks are charged separately, and there is no minimum bar spend.
The £39 set menu is any five dishes chosen from our full menu, plus unlimited naan, rice and papadums. If your group would rather order à la carte on the night, that works too.
Three hours from arrival, with additional hours at £10 per person if the evening runs on. Bring your own cake and decorations, or tell us what you have in mind and we will arrange them.
Everything is prepared with certified halal ingredients, with vegetarian and vegan dishes throughout the menu rather than tucked in a corner of it.
We are ranked the No.1 Indian restaurant in London on Tripadvisor and have won the London Curry Award four times, if that helps make the case to whoever else is deciding.
Check Your Date
Private room for 9 to 26 guests. No room hire fee. £39 per person. £90 deposit, fully refunded if you cancel more than three days ahead.
Or call us on 020 7794 8899