We recently had our wedding at outdoor art club. RSVP is one of the approved caterers for this venue. This is a long post, but the summary is: The food was amazing (and I'm very very very picky), they are extremely organized and get back to you immediately, service was perfect without any hiccups. I would use them again in a heartbeat, amazing in all aspects. I had to reset my yelp password to leave this review (and the hassle was totally worth it).
The process:
OAC has a list of around 20 approved caterers. I started by reading through all the yelp reviews (yes all of them, and yes every review). Did I mention food is very important to me, this was one of my few wedding tasks, but my wife knows how anal I am about food so she trusted me to go crazy in depth on this (which I did). Based on the reviews, and photos of their of their food I narrowed down the list to 11 potential companies. 3 failed to reply to my email, so I crossed them off the list. This left me with 8 options. I called each one to discuss what I envisioned for the meal and requested a quote from each. The quotes ranged from $97/pp - $135/pp, with two outliers around $250+ (ruled these out, as they blew up our budget), and 1 company that failed to issue a quote. I was down to 5 at this point. I decided to have tastings at all 5 of the contenders.
Tastings:
The cheapest caterer was pretty much just that, it felt like cafeteria food. My wife said my face looked deeply upset during the entire tasting. She was right, it felt insane that someone would charge $97pp for food that reminded me of my college cafeteria (gross). I walked through the kitchen to their bathroom, smart and final cans of sauce were everywhere, this was not a chef, this was a cafeteria cook.
The next two were slightly better than a cafeteria, so approximately what you'd get at a so-so restaurant. These two were priced around $125-ish. Again, I was left feeling bad about spending so much money on such a sad meal.
The next caterer was solid, but not exceptional. If I had been forced to select someone at this point, it would have been them, but again, not really making me feel good about the $135pp price tag. I could have a meal at chez panisse, gary danko, or nearly any great SF restaurant with this price tag, and the food here was not at that level.
And finally, RSVP. Chef Jacqueline is the real deal. This was fine dining masquerading as catering. Not only was everything delicious and perfectly cooked, it was also beautiful. We wanted a tuna tartare (I know, so basic), she brought it out on a double thick fried wonton chip, with a red and green cabbage slaw, with perfectly cubed sashimi quality fresh fish (this was NOT the case with the other caterers). The double thick chip was great to keep it all crispy and the slaw added great color and presentation. Her attention to detail is real, and her love of cooking shines through in little thought out details like this.
We also requested an asian short rib (like kalbi, but in an american short rib cut, so not cross cut ribs), she killed this dish, so delicious, perfectly braised, and excellent flavor. My wife thought it was a little sweet, so Chef made this slightly less sweet for our wedding (exactly as requested, amazing).
She had two salad options, and we loved both of them. We ended up going with a butter lettuce salad with shaved parmesan, apples, and toasted pecans.
We requested a potato gratin, chef recommended leek and gruyere, which was awesome. This was a really great dish, perfectly sliced potato (uniform thin slices, again attention to detail everywhere in her cooking) cooked through with just the right amount of bubbling cheesy char on top.
We had family style service and decided to have an alternate entree of fish. Chef recommended a slow roasted atlantic salmon with herb crust and cucumber-ginger-lime relish. I was a little concerned as it's easy to overcook fish, but again, she nailed this on the day of -- perfectly cooked. Since we didn't taste this at the first tasting she organized a second tasting for this dish. We had to hold off on the tasting as she was waiting for salmon season, again, the mark of someone who cares about their cooking and will only accept the best!
My mother in law is a vegetarian so we asked chef to come up with something tasty for her. She dreamt up an oven-roasted curried cauliflower, yams, beluga lentils, arugula, cilantro dish. This was so good and inventive, really a killer dish. We were originally going to have roasted summer vegetables for our meat eaters, but decided on this instead, it was that good. And again, just a beautiful plating, brightly curried and roasted cauliflower with yams, fresh greens on top and beluga lentils mixed in with pickled red onion. Really really delicious and appetizing!
Review continued in Jennie N. (my wifes account), as I wrote over 5000 characters. read more
