I cannot begin to express the nightmare that it was dealing with this catering company and Chef Carl. If you'd rather watch a video with my experience with this company follow this link to TikToks I made out of frustration.
https://www.tiktok....com/@markito908?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc
This all started when we went for our tasting. The food was nothing to rave about, it was ok at best. But what sold us on it was that he was within our budget and he promised to do a few extra tasks that solved a few conflicts we had with other vendors (such as champagne distribution and cake cutting).
Here was what, I can now recall, was the first red flag I should've caught when speaking to Chef Carl. Everytime we had a question about things that would be included with the booking he would respond with what I can only describe as "arrogance." Asking him questions like "can we please make sure we have chicken breast instead of chicken thigh" would usually be followed with a condescending nod and "sure" or "look I've been doing this for 20 years..." or something along those lines. At the time my thought process was, "he's probably heard these questions a million times and that's probably why he's responding like this' '. Turns out that that was his attitude all along.
After that, the following two months were just a blur of unanswered texts, emails, questions and wrong invoices followed by the lack of an actual process to actually iron out details regarding the booking. A month away from the wedding our questions were simple " when do we have to give you our final RSVP count? and when do we have to pay you by?" but as he refused to answer back and he just kept sending incorrect quotes and invoices, more and more questions piled up that he just refused to acknowledge. Simple things like "can you please give us the options for our guests that need diabetic entrees?" or "why does the "operation and admin fee" keep going up in each invoice?"
A week away from the wedding he still refused to give us any type of reasonable communication so we made the call to cancel the booking and just find a new caterer, and thank goodness we did because it turned out that Chef Carl was scamming us the entire time. The last communication we had with him was after I sent him a long message explaining why we are cancelling our booking. He called me, because he doesn't like to keep things on record, he won't answer emails, he just always calls even though I repeatedly asked to please answer in writing. I knew this so I decided not to answer, so he left a voicemail (which i kept) basically gaslighting me saying things like "I don't know what you are stressing about, your wedding is not for a week, I don't usually do anything until 2 days before". I called him back and just said "we just want our money back" to which I just recieved a "Ok, just tell me where to send the check" and hung up. Then I sent him a text message with the address to which he replied "ok". And that, ladies and gentlemen is the last time I ever heard from Chef Carl.
I sent him emails, texts, phone calls, voicemails which he never replied to and he never returned my money. I'm just writing this review now because we ended up having to dispute the charge with our bank and that's how we ended up getting our money back. Everyone in TX should be aware that Chef Carl, is not reputable, is not client friendly and most importantly is very likely a scam.