When you look at a hall, take careful note of what the kitchen has to offer.

How clean is it? Particularly in rarely-used country halls, you may need to allow time on the day for some scrubbing.

My next question is what cooking facilities are available. How many stoves are there, and how big? Gas or electric? (Gas ovens in particular will fail to start, and are largely unrecoverable.)

There is never enough oven space, so my next question is whether there’s easy overflow to outside. Gas smoker ovens, regularly available in Aldi, are fantastic for bulk roasting, as long as you have immediate external access to a covered area.

Multiple hotplates are very useful, especially gas ones as they heat food quickly. I’m really fond of dishes and sauces I can do quickly on a stovetop. Microwaves are not useful for bulk food, but are OK to heat sauces.

If the cooking facilities are inadequate, you can often bring in other gear. We have a couple of pie ovens and electric grills, but the electrical circuits may struggle, particularly in older halls. We have a tealight-powered bain marie which has been useful when challenged for cooking facilities.

You need plenty of bench space for the extra equipment, all your serving gear, and room for food preparation.

Fridge space matters for food safety — for a big feast you may need to bring in eskies to supplement, and need somewhere to put them.

In some wonderful halls, you have a commercial dishwasher. That’s great, but often you just have a domestic sink and you’ll really struggle. I get around that by having plenty of serving gear and being willing to take home boxes of dirty dishes to do the next day; Polit has a better system with a dedicated washup crew.

Consider how people will get in and out of the kitchen. Ideally, you nominate one door for inwards traffic and another for outwards — you don’t want people tripping with a big pot of hot soup!

It’s usually OK to have a few people pop into the kitchen for a chat, but you really don’t want everyone traipsing in to rinse their dishes. Ideally you want a sink (or regularly-replaced tub) for that.

You want to have a garnishing table, usually in the hall as kitchens are never big enough. Then a serving area which is always in the main hall.