The Journal · The Brantford Club

Camp 31 vs The Brantford Club: The Catered Party and the Hosted Dinner

Camp 31 BBQ is a barbecue restaurant at 22 Paris Road in Paris, Ontario, that also sends its smoke trailer to your hall, backyard, or office as a mobile caterer. The Brantford Club is a members’ club kept at 98 George Street, Brantford, where the kitchen, the room, and the service are held together for one party at a time.

If it was the smokehouse you wanted, it is at 22 Paris Road, Paris, Ontario, and its own site gives the phone as 519-442-3560 and the hours as 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday, open every day of the year except Christmas Day and New Year’s Day. Takeout is ordered online, a table is reserved through the Reserve link on its site, and Camp 31 catering starts with the form on its catering page or an email to catering@camp31.com. The question behind the search is a different one: whose party is it to run?

Every party has somebody running it. At a catered party that somebody is you: you found the hall, counted heads, and booked the food for six. Camp 31 is built for that host; its site calls the Camp 31 BBQ team a fully mobile catering unit, with the smoke trailer pulling onto your premises. At a hosted dinner the somebody is the house. At The Brantford Club the room, the kitchen, executive chef Eric Wasylenky’s, the staff who serve, and your event coordinator arrive together for one party; the host says the occasion, the date, and roughly how many. The concession comes first.

The Smokehouse on Paris Road

Camp 31 BBQ is a barbecue restaurant at 22 Paris Road in Paris, Ontario, run by an Alabama barbecue team that, as it states, has called Paris its second home for twenty-five years. The menu is smoked meat: ribs, brisket, pulled pork, smoked chicken and sausage, with baked beans, coleslaw, and cornbread as the original sides. The catering side is the same kitchen on wheels. Its catering form asks where the party is (its own restaurant, your home, your business, an indoor or outdoor facility) and what it is: a lunch, a dinner, a cocktail reception, a birthday, a stag and doe, a company function. “No event is too large or too small” is its line. If the party is a backyard fortieth with sixty cousins, or a crew lunch at the yard with the trucks parked around the trailer, book Camp 31. The party is yours to run and the food is the point. Nothing at 98 George Street competes with it on that ground, and this Journal says so.

Does The Brantford Club cater events off site?

No. The kitchen at The Brantford Club is in the house at 98 George Street, and the rooms of the house are the offer. The Club’s own booking page puts it as one event, one room, your name on the door for the day, with the menu planned with you and cooked by the house kitchen under executive chef Eric Wasylenky. Nothing leaves in a trailer. The food is served in the Dining Room, the Waterous Family Dining Room, the 98 George Room, or the Bateson Lounge, by the Club’s own staff, to one party. The Club hosts; it does not send food out. Barbecue delivered to an address of your choosing is Camp 31’s catering form. An evening somebody else runs, in a private house that has set its tables since 1898, is one email to manager@thebrantfordclub.com, and a person, not a form, writes back.

The House That Runs the Evening

The Brantford Club is the private club that holds 98 George Street, within sight of the Court House in downtown Brantford, in an Italianate house built around 1855, and the Club has kept its tables there since 1898. What a host receives is the evening assembled: a room that closes behind your party, a menu settled beforehand, dietary needs taken at booking and told to the kitchen before the first plate is set, the Club’s bar poured by the Club’s people, and one event coordinator from the first email to the final toast. The private dining page says lunch runs the same way on a smaller scale. Retirements, milestone birthdays, anniversaries, and client dinners each take a room of their own. The house does the impressing; the host says the occasion, the date, and the count.

Camp 31 vs The Brantford Club, Seven Questions Down

Camp 31’s column is from its own site; the Club’s from its booking pages.

The Retirement Party and the Retirement Dinner

The same occasion can be either. A retirement party in the shop with the whole crew and a tray of pulled pork on the workbench is a Camp 31 afternoon. The retirement dinner, with the twelve who worked beside him for thirty years and a speech that needs the plates to stop moving, is a George Street evening; the Journal’s entry on how to give a retirement speech is written from the side of the room that watches those speeches land, and the first thing it asks of any venue is a pause in the service. The office Christmas party divides the same way, and the Journal’s work Christmas party ideas say which decisions carry it: a smokehouse buffet for the warehouse, a hosted dinner for the partners and their spouses. Guest count decides less than people expect; the question is whether you want to run the night or be a guest at it.

The particulars people want

Camp 31 BBQ’s facts are from its own site, read in September 2026: the home page, the catering form, the catering menu, and the contact page; the Club’s from its booking and private dining pages. The halls a caterer feeds are listed in the Journal’s register of event venues in Brantford, where the house is the last and narrowest entry. All of the Journal’s comparisons, this one among them, are listed on the register page.