Lauren A.
Yelp
Fantastic food, difficult to get everything sorted in the months leading up to the wedding. Pro tip: Ask your questions via email, so you can circle-back to their response a few months later if something has gone amiss just before your wedding/event.
(+) Let's start with the positive -
1. Their food is really, really great. In our buffet we had: the green goddess salad, company potatoes, collard greens, roasted vegetables, brown-sugar brined chicken (both bone-in and breast) and steak sirloin. Our guests (some of whom are quite picky, and some that were comparing it to swarays they've attended in Beverly Hills) loved the food. It was delicious!!
2. The servers and bartenders were really friendly, but not over-doing it (basically, they were awesome at their jobs).
3. We didn't expect them to make so much effort with the appetizer platters the servers carried around the cocktail hour - they were beautiful! Each one was copper (I think) and had a single flower on it. Amazing!!
(+/-) Some things that didn't go so well, but weren't the end of the world -
(1) The steak at the tasting was cold, so it was hard to evaluate it. I think it was warm on the day-of, so that's a plus.
(2) They switched ice cream vendors between our contract and our event, so we ended up having a lot of confusion about if Izzy's (local MN ice cream maker) would be our ice cream, or Ben & Jerrys (not what we were going for). Since we had a copy of the proposal with Izzy's on it, they honored that, so turned out to be fine.
(3) Last, we asked about bread and butter being on the tables back in November. We're glad we asked and got a response in email, because when it wasn't in a proposal close to the wedding date we forwarded the email from Chowgirls confirming that their buffet service comes with bread & butter at no additional charge, and that got put back into the contract.
(-) The most annoying things were:
(1) We found price errors in nearly every revision of their proposal. For this one, if you're willing to review each proposal with a fine-tooth comb (our wedding planner found some too), they'll edit it to make it right - just know you're going to need to put in the time to look it all over carefully each time. (I think we had over 20 revisions in the 9 months of planning we did with them leading up to the wedding.)
(2) The flavors you taste at the tasting may not be available on your date. I'll admit this one made me livid - we were not told until after our tasting. We were given 3 flavors of cake to try at our tasting in December for our wedding cake and we loved, loved, loved the Blood Orange. When we gave our feedback on the flavors we were told that since our wedding was in September, that flavor may not be available. Not a definite one way or the other, and not what we expected. Chowgirls' response was that they serve what's in-season, but I was really blown away that they would give us food at the tasting that wouldn't be available for our wedding. It took a lot of prodding and convincing (many thanks to our wedding planner!) but we did end up getting a blood orange wedding cake. So...stick to your guns?