I am giving three stars because in fairness the food on our wedding day tasted amazing, and I love that they pack up the leftovers for the couple. However, working with this catere...r was one of the most stressful parts of planning our wedding, and I would not recommend them.
Our experience started at the related restaurant, Cheryl’s on 12th. During our process of looking for caterers we figured we would check out the food at Cheryl’s because it was a little hard for us to schedule a tasting during the week because we were out of town, and Cheryl’s is where a tasting would ultimately be and a lot of the things we wanted to taste were on the general menu. We had a really bad experience with our server and followed up with As Good As It Gets (AGAIG) about why we had lost some interest about we ate at Cheryl’s. Cheryl’s made it up to us by giving us our tasting for free, which was very much appreciated. During the tasting, we really liked several dishes and we thought the chef was super nice and personable. We decided to lock in with AGAIG and wrote off the server incident as a fluke.
As we approached the few weeks before our wedding day, things started coming off of the rails. First, prior to the contract deadline, we asked to change the seasonal vegetables to grilled carrots. We received a bunch of pushback on that change, even though we timely made it and it was just changing vegetables. Two or three days before the wedding, we discovered that AGAIT does not offer serveware for family style catering. I am not talking dinnerware like the plates and napkins guest actually use, I am talking serveware like platters and serving spoons. I reviewed all of our communications and the contract and this detail was not in there. It was also particularly surprising given that we paid more to do family style, and AGAIT was providing other service items for drinks, passed appetizers, and to go boxes. We also found out that they do provide serveware for buffet style, which would have been a cheaper option than we chose. We had met/communicated with AGAIT about the plan numerous times (and they do offer family style—that was not a special request), yet the fact that they did not have a plan on how to actually serve their food or that we needed to have such a plan was never mentioned. It still would not have been mentioned if I didn’t pick up a stray comment during the carrot conversation. This ended up in us incurring a significant, unexpected charge with our rentals company for serveware days before the wedding. It also led to a lot of stress during the week of the wedding.
On the wedding day, the food was fantastic and we ultimately got our carrots (though, we did not know that until dinner was served). However, the caterer did not make sure the groom and I got the passed appetizers like they were supposed to (I ended up only getting one of three on my own) and they did not get me drinks either (though, I am not sure they planned to do this). Also, one of the catering company’s managers who I spoke with related to the serveware came to the wedding to make sure everything went smoothly, which was appreciated. However, he also approached me during my wedding to introduce himself and state that’s why he was there and to ask if I was happy with the carrots, which I found poorly timed given we were in the middle of our reception.