My first review for Bold Catering & Design was for their catering service at our company holiday party in 2011. At that time, they were known as Bold American Events. We've had good results with Bold at our company parties and have used them multiple times over the years. We've never a bad experience with them (at least, in my opinion).
Now, I'm getting married. My fiancee and I hired a wedding planner. After booking our venue, the Atlanta History Center and Swan House, and letting our planner know our tastes and vision for the wedding, her first recommended caterer to us was Bold. I wasn't surprised. I've enjoyed Bold's food and am also a fan of their restaurant group, Fifth Group Restaurants (Alma Cocina, Ecco, La Tavola Trattoria, Lure, South City Kitchen, The Original El Taco).
Bold is also an approved caterer at the History Center as well as many other popular Atlanta wedding venues.
Our wedding planner worked with Michelle Segura at Bold and set up a private tasting appointment for us. This was my first wedding tasting and I was impressed. The experience was essentially a private, seated chef's tasting. It was like going on a nice date. There were elegant table settings and a personal server. As each course came out, the chef who prepared the course explained the dish(es) to us. Presumably, relatively big catering companies like Bold can afford to do these intimate private tastings, with chefs and servers on-hand, at no charge because the company is selling catering orders on the magnitude of tens of thousands of dollars to each couple.
The tasting took place at the King Plow Arts Center where Bold's offices are based. Bold has two free marked parking spots in the surface lot outside. Otherwise, I think you have to pay for parking.
Our tasting table was candle-lit, which added to the upscale ambiance. The room was bright enough so we could get a good look at and take decent pictures of the food.
Our server, Raheen Brown, was (I believe Michelle called him) a "VIP" server; one that my fiancee and I could choose to be our personal server at our wedding. He would be assigned to serve only us. That's pretty cool. Raheen was exceptional, pretty much the perfect server. He was extremely polite and attentive and he neatly packed up our leftovers to take home and enjoy. He was great.
Before the tasting, our wedding planner emailed us a preliminary proposal that Michelle put together. She also emailed us sample photos from Bold. We chose a few each of passed hors d'oeuvres, stations (we decided to go with dinner stations instead of a seated dinner), and desserts. Reviewing the proposal and choosing what we wanted to taste was actually more challenging and time-consuming than I thought it'd be. Obviously, food means a lot to me (just look at my Yelp account) and I want to have good food at my wedding. Bold has quite the catering menu with many, many options. It took my fiancee and I a couple sittings to pore over the menu and decide what we wanted to sample at our tasting. Not only did we want food that was delicious, interesting, and unique - we're both adventurous eaters/foodies and so are many of our guests - we also wanted to accommodate all of our guests' tastes, allergies, and dietary restrictions. It can be tough to balance. Plus, Bold had so many wonderful-sounding options that it was already tough enough to narrow down our choices.
Here's what we ended up going with:
Passed Hors d'Oeuvres
* Carolina-style BBQ pulled pork tacos with creamy coleslaw
* Vegetarian empanadas with shiitake mushroom, eggplant, zucchini, peppers, onion, coconut curry
* Vietnamese rice paper rolls with ground chicken, scallion, radish sprouts, soy tamarind sauce
Stations
* Chef-attended sweet potato gnocchi station - duck confit, Brussels sprouts leaves, white balsamic cherry gastrique
* Carving station - pepper-crusted beef tenderloin, horseradish cream, spicy mustard, Yukon gold mashed potatoes
* Gemelli pasta station, chef attended - wild mushroom, onion, peppers, marinara and Cajun tasso ham, Parmesan cream sauce
Desserts
* Banana pudding, Chantilly cream, Nilla wafer
* French macarons - raspberry cheesecake, PB&J
* Homemade praline chocolate truffles
* Cardamom panna cotta, fried cinnamon sugar wonton sail
In general, my fiancee and I liked the food. Nothing was bad, but some items were better than others. Along with the chefs explaining each course as they came out, Michelle walked us through each item as we tasted them together with her and our wedding planner. Michelle had an iPad to show us pictures of our alternatives. That was really helpful. It was also useful to see the ways in which different foods could be presented. In the end, Michelle and our planner really helped us change and shape a potential menu for our wedding guests, one that my fiancee and I are both happy with. I'll write a review update after our wedding if we decide to go with Bold. They're already a strong contender out of the gate. read more