I am GENUINELY shocked by the good reviews. We're forced to use AoF for our event because they have…read morea contract with the venue. While the woman we've been working with, Emily, is nice, the tastings have been abysmal, we've been nickeled and dimed at every opportunity, and frankly everything else has been incredibly low standard.
I kid you not, in one of the few conversations I've had on the phone with them, I was asked "oh you want SILVERWARE too??" And then I knew we were in for a rough few months. They don't have their own linen, plates, or silverware. That is an additional cost. Now if we were getting quality food, I could over look it, but their quality of food is commensurate with plastic ware. Which brings me to the food.
We scheduled a tasting. They had a wide array of options, I'll give them that. If you have food allergies, like me, this is not the place to go because most of their dishes weren't correctly marked for allergies. None of the appetizers were marked as gluten free so I can't speak to any of them. The champagne chicken also wasn't marked as gluten free so I didn't touch it. My colleague that attended with me tried it and immediately wrote it off as forgettable. I did try the bruschetta chicken and that's basically chicken in tomato sauce and the tomato sauce is pretty much all you taste. The house ranch chicken is good. That was the only thing I re-tried because, given the rest of it, I was surprised I found anything good. Holy shoes, the beef options were so bad that we're now campaigning with the approval authority to waive having a beef option. Not sure how you dry out tenderloin THAT badly, but it was awful. Flank steak just as bad. Roast beef was gag worthy. It's roast beef in what tastes like the cheap gravy packets you get at the store. Their short rib in Cabernet was SALTY. SUPER salty, and again tasted like they used quick mix gravy and dumped cooking wine in it. I couldn't even look at the salmon because the fish smell emanated off of it terribly.
All of their sides were just standard. Nothing particularly special about them. The mashed potatoes were bland but maybe if you mix it with the short rib above, the two will even themselves out.
When we walked in the gave us a glass of bubbles, which is a nice gesture, but the sweet/yeasty taste set bells off. I asked afterwards what brand of bubbles we're paying for and was told Korbel. You're paying $19+ for bottle of Korbel. Which led me to another question - what table wine am I paying for? Emily responded with Stone Cellar so I did my research. It retails for about $9-ish/bottle. So, I went to Total Wine and More in the name of science to find it. Couldn't find it. I asked an employee about it and he gave me a sour face. He said "that's in the every day wine area. We don't have it but I can get you close to it." Y'all, he took me back to the area with Barefoot, the fruity moscato, and box wine. So you're paying 17.95 a bottle for Barefoot equivalent. I do understand how marking things up but marketing it as something it's not is awful. That is not table wine. There are plenty of GOOD wines in the $10 range that are not boxed wine equivalent.
But oh! You want to bring your own wine? Last year's committee was forced to work with AoF as well and brought their own wine, and they were charged $5/bottle corking fee. Between this year and last year they've upped their corking fee 100% to $10/bottle. I was e-mailing Emily back and forth on the bar concerns and she said (what I interpret as mockingly because what the heck am I going to do with a bunch of bottles or Barefoot-esque wine??) "you get to keep all the bottles your guests don't drink!" Oh. Yay?
So if you want a high priced, terrible meal, this is the place for you! If not, go elsewhere. I know for a fact I will strongly discourage use of the venue again for the simple fact that I don't want to give this catering company any more business.
