I don’t even know how to start this review.
I usually don’t write negative reviews but I felt I had to share our experience.
Our daughter is getting married next year so she flew home to Maryland last week, to get a bunch of wedding planning... done. Our wedding planner, scheduled three caterer tastings for the week. The first two went off without a hitch.
We arrived as scheduled to Occasions catering in Washington, DC at 12 noon, for our tasting. Their entrance was very impressive, with dinnerware, chairs and linens on display, but when we arrived nobody greeted us and we felt totally out of place. Our wedding planner took us into the tasting room. Fifteen minutes after our scheduled tasting Shawna, from Occasions, finally acknowledged us. She came in to the room to say hello but didn’t make eye contact with anyone and then promptly left the room. A few minutes later she called our wedding planner out of the room.
Despite the numerous emails confirming our appt. and a phone call from our planner to Shawna the night before our scheduled appointment, Occasions dropped the ball and was not at all prepared for us. The reason Shawna asked our planner to speak outside of the tasting room was because they needed us out of that room for another potential client. So they made us leave their tasting room and put us in their display room where they made a mock up tasting room.
Fourtyfive minutes after our tasting was due to start they brought a plate of hors devours that were cold, even though they were supposed to be warm. Based on the fact they were not what we had requested and there were not enough for each of us to try, it was clear these were left over from the people who were scheduled for the tasting room we were hurried out of. Shawna tried to tell us they were the correct serving temperature.
Finally at 12:45pm they came in with two “display” plates (for 4 people) of meals saying our actual meals would be coming out. By then my husband was getting very upset with the poor service and attitude we had been receiving from Shawna & Occasions. We said we were going to leave and forego our tasting of the main meal. Shawna said she understood and would go get us desserts to take home. She left the room and within a couple of minutes the waiter came in with our entrees, talk about lack of communication! We told him to pack them up and we would take them home and that we were done. Shawna came back with desserts to take. Some were still frozen and parfaits were thrown together for us (again clearly left overs from the other peoples tasting). Carlos came back with our entrees and we left. We drove straight home to put everything in the refrigerator before going to our next scheduled appointment. When we got home we opened the “care packages” to see what we got and we were blown away by the awful smell. The meat was still raw and God only knows why the fish smelled so bad, needless to say, all of the meals went down the garbage disposal.
Occasions is supposed to be in the service (catering) business. When Occasion's tells me "what do you expect? we are not a restaurant” That is absurd! A catering business needs to be a restaurant that works remotely from it’s kitchen, yet they could not even prepare and serve food in their own building!
When someone tries to serve me food that was clearly taken from another persons table I am disgusted.
When someone gives me undercooked meat & very bad smelling fish. I am sickened.