Onam celebration in Bengaluru

If you cook it yourselves, you buy matta rice, a lot of coconuts and coconut oil, the vegetables for avial, olan, erissery and sambar, curd for kaalan, jaggery and dal for the payasam, pappadams, bananas and the leaves. Nobody publishes what that comes to in Bengaluru. Hiring a Malayali cook for the day is another way, but we found no published price for one. A samajam can also cook its own sadya with volunteers, which costs the groceries and a lot of hands.

For 100 guests, a cook team at your place costs ₹42,000 to ₹56,000. A restaurant at ₹979 a head comes to ₹97,900 plus taxes, if it can seat that many. Family boxes from a known Kerala restaurant come to ₹1.36 lakh to ₹1.6 lakh at last year's price. A ₹3,250 hotel sadya comes to ₹3.25 lakh plus taxes.

Restaurant and hotel sadyas run for a few days around Thiruvonam, and their prices came out two to three weeks before in 2026.

Another hotel charged ₹3,000 plus taxes for its sadya.

For a sadya at your own place, one Bengaluru caterer publishes ₹420 to ₹560 a plate for 20 to 24 items, and says a sadya costs about ₹60 to ₹100 a plate more than a Karnataka leaf meal. Its page doesn't say what takes a plate from ₹420 to ₹560, so ask for the dish list at each price. On mytribe, Diviskitchen and BookMyPartyFood offer an Onam sadya on banana leaf. Ask them for the price.

Buying the leaves yourself? Buy more than you need. With only 6 in 10 good enough to use, 300 guests need about 500 leaves.

Ask what happens if fewer people come than the number you gave, and get the answer in writing with the menu.

A banana leaf meal isn't always a sadya. Bhandary's Kitchen's ₹350 leaf meal, for example, is a Karnataka menu: poori or akki roti, bisibele bath, sambar, rasam, kosambari, palya and payasa. So ask for the list, and check it has the sadya's own dishes.

Ask which style they cook. Bengaluru's home kitchens sold Kottayam and Palakkad style sadyas in 2025, and one family who wrote to us asked for Palakkad style for 12. If your family is from Thrissur or Thiruvananthapuram, say so.

Ask for photos of last year's Onam leaf. Two caterers on mytribe offer an Onam sadya on banana leaf: Diviskitchen, a home kitchen in Horamavu that cooks pure vegetarian, and BookMyPartyFood, who served one on banana leaves with traditional seating at an office. Ask them for the price.

A home kitchen is the one built for small. Divya runs Diviskitchen from Horamavu and keeps to events of 100 or fewer. She offers a homely Onam sadya on banana leaf. Ask her the price and the smallest number she'll cook for.

Ordering boxes, order early. In 2025, Bengaluru's home kitchens closed their Onam orders on 2 September for Thiruvonam on the 5th, and a well-known Kerala restaurant sold its family boxes on two days only.

Servers who know the leaf. Each dish has its place on the leaf and its turn in the meal, and the payasam has to reach the last row. Ask the caterer how many servers come, and who clears and lays the leaves between sittings.

On tables. Guests who can't sit on the floor, and offices, can eat with the leaves laid on long covered tables, as in the photo.

Cooking in the clubhouse? Ask your society first whether it allows gas cylinders and a big burner there, and whether the kitchen is big enough.

Put the whole bill to the committee at once. An apartment in Kannamangala that wrote to us wanted a proposal to put before its association, for a mixed crowd of 60 to 100. Sponsors, a ticket or a flat share all start from the same total.

If residents make the pookalam themselves, the flowers are the only cost there (question 9).

Why the advance stays with them: a caterer books cooks and servers for your date and pays them either way. So when you book early, pay the smallest advance the caterer takes, and get the date, the dish list and the head count in writing.

The notice each needs to cook: a day at Diviskitchen, 24 hours at Mirakle Events, four to five days at BookMyPartyFood and about a week for 400.

Restaurant and hotel sadyas were announced two to three weeks before in 2026, and home kitchens stopped taking orders about three days before.

Fresh flowers, laid yourself

Chrysanthemum ₹400 to ₹800 a kilo, Varamahalakshmi week

Ready-made, to keep

Cloth from ₹1,000 in Kerala

Buy the flowers the night before or at dawn. KR Market trades from about 3 am to 8:30 am, and buying in bulk from a wholesaler costs less.

A ready-made one saves the early start. In Kerala, ready-made flower pookalams were ₹500 to ₹1,500 by size, and stitched silk-on-cloth ones that you keep from ₹1,000. The cloth ones are sold by makers in Kerala through Instagram, so order well ahead.

A decorator for the door? A family in JP Nagar who wrote to us planned ₹4,000 for a pookalam and a flower hanging at the main door. On mytribe, Mahinava Events does fresh marigold work and petal rangoli at the door, and Dream in Detail does Kerala-style decor with a petal floor rangoli. Ask them for the price.