Good Enuf 2 Eat

We had a New Year's Eve wedding. We were very disappointed with the overall catering service. Every guest and bridal party member we have spoken to have had nothing but complaints about the food service. We hired Chef Kim (Good Enuf 2 Eat Catering) to prepare and serve a pasta bar with one type of pasta, 3 sauce choices, protein and veggie options, bread, and salad. It was planned prior to COVID-19 so initially, guests would be able to prepare their own plates. When we spoke with her about making accommodations due to COVID-19, we asked (and she agreed) that she would serve guests their buffet selections rather than them serving themselves to reduce contact with the food. We did not request, nor expect the food to be cooked on site for each individual guest.

Several of our guests timed how long it took for each person to be served as they stood in line and said it took 3-4 minutes per person. With more than 50 guests, that is 2.5 hours (at 3 minutes), which aligns with the amount of time we lost at our reception because we had to wait for everyone to be served before we could continue with the rest of the reception. I cannot tell you how upset we were as we stressed from the very beginning to everyone how important it was to us to be able to enjoy as much of the night as possible celebrating with our friends and family. Instead, we had barely an hour.

Several of our guests did not even get dinner, settling for salad and cake, because it took too long and/or she ran out of both alfredo and marinara sauce - one of those was the Mother of the Groom. Our guests did not get the wonderful food we sampled at our food tasting (while the alfredo was good, the marinara was bland), nor have the experience we wanted for them.

Additionally, she came unprepared, even though we sent her all of the information from the venue (which indicated what she would have to provide) and she spoke with the venue’s Day-of-Coordinator at which time she could have gotten clarification if she was unsure about anything. The food should have been prepared prior to arrival and placed in sternos to keep warm and served from there rather than being cooked (or "sauced and tossed" as she called it) for each guest on hot plates that we were told she had to borrow from the venue.

To have the first thing our guests continue to tell us be about the terrible food service is not only disappointing, but also embarrassing because we chose her and we trusted her. We did the best we could to walk around and talk to guests - apologizing for their wait. We did what we could to salvage the rest of the night and enjoyed the little time we had to celebrate with them.

When we contacted her:
1. She blamed me because we were behind schedule (by 30 minutes because guests and members of the bridal party were delayed due to bad traffic at and around our host hotel for an event the hotel was having that night, not the hour she accused me of).
2. She blamed the venue for not providing what she needed (which should have been worked out prior to the day of the event when they made initial contact).
3. She blamed us because she didn't know how we expected a pasta action station (thought we only requested a pasta bar where she would serve the options, not prepare them). The irony - the idea for the pasta bar came from a wedding show (with hundreds of attendees) we attended where the caterer did just that. Our mistake was in not hiring a professional who understood the difference between serving and preparing.
4. She said "when you give guests 3 options of sauces, there’s no way to predict what they are going to choose. 50% wanted Alfredo to start which went very fast." If the other 50% got marinara, then she shouldn't have run out of BOTH sauces before everyone got to eat. Again, as mentioned before, everyone did NOT eat, yet there were none of the leftovers she promised to box up for us to take with us for later that night.
5. She said the food was cooked. Yet it took 3-4 minutes PER person. It doesn't take that long to toss fully cooked food. If she knew she was going to heat and toss to order, then she should have had more than two people with hot plates to serve that number of people in a reasonable amount of time.

She made an insincere generic apology about miscommunication but took no responsibility and blamed everyone - including us as her clients.

Regardless, the food service was poor and that is unacceptable. When our guests talk about our wedding, they all say the same thing: "it was beautiful...the music was great...the caterer was horrible."

When we first met her, she said she generally caters for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for their NYE event, but they hadn't booked her yet. Unless she was only preparing for the starting offensive and defensive lines (without their spouses) I don't believe she could handle the volume. If someone is having a small event with less than 20 guests, she may be able to handle it. Anything more...Don't make the mistake we did.

Our reception was ruined and we can never get that back. More...