Park Avenue Catering

Like shesemail said, Park Ave did an amazing job! The food was excellent! My guests repeatedly told me that the dinner was soooo good and not just one thing, EVERYTHING! They also put together a fantastic bridal basket for us and we were able to take home all the leftovers. We were so excited! Ha ha! The only thing that I did not like was that they added white feather boas to the buffet tables, but those were quickly removed. ;)

I have to reiterate that the food was magnificent and I would highly recommend them to any bride. I would also ask for Denise, she was AMAZING to work with. Very efficient, easy to work with and very prompt with return emails. Thank you!

Park Avenue Catering did the most amazing job! Not only did the dishes that were prepared look freat, it tasted fantastic. I still get compliments from my guests on how great the food tasted. I will use Park Avenue in the future for all my catering needs. Denise is one of their best assets, ask for her!

Park Avenue Catering exceeded my expectations. Their staff was phenomenal and our guests will not stop talking about how amazing their food was! Our contact was Denise Kramer and I don't even want to imagine my wedding without her. I live in Newport Beach so I was not familiar with the area and every question I had she answered and every vendor she recommended was top notch. We changed our menu a couple times and Denise was always cooperative. Their gourmet dishes were affordable and the presentation was beyond amazing. We also planned a wine tasting the day after our wedding and ordered gourmet box lunches from Park Avenue that were fresh, healthy and yummy! Our guests were very impressed with the quality and presentation. Don't even bother looking elsewhere, Park Avenue is by far the best!!

I'm glad to see that at least a couple of other brides didn't have the horrific experience that we did with Park Avenue Catering and Denise Kramer.

I would think twice before you book with them and if you do book them, you need to watch everything closely.

Here are just a few examples of what happened with our wedding:

1) Food at the tasting was decent - but that is NOT what we got at the wedding. Come wedding time, the food they served was not the same quality. I'm not sure if this is a bait and switch or what, but it was upsetting to say the least.

2) Even after I walked through a detailed table chart with Denise and with the servers who were setting up, they managed to mix up 2 of our tables. It was extremely obvious too because one was set for 8 people and the other for 10, so guests went to sit down and were short 2 chairs. It also so happened that because of the mix-up, our 2 work tables - which we intentionally placed at opposite ends (I even explained the importance of this to Denise) - ended up side by side. Not a good situation.

3) Not only did they fail to serve about 4-5 tables with wedding cake (including the head table!), when my father asked the caterer about the lack of cake he was told it was gone - which even he found suspicious since the cake was sufficient to feed 60-70 people more than we had in attendance and so many people didn't even get a piece. My mother went to ask the caterer what happened and why the cake count was so off and found all of the servers gathered around the cake in the back eating it!!! This one still makes my blood boil a bit. It was super yummy - super expensive Perfect Endings cake too. Yet, there the catering staff was chowing down on my cake before the guests or head table had even been served. This was particularly upsetting because I had specifically instructed Denise to take any unserved cake and store it inside the house.

4) The CONTRACT - beware!!!! I'm an attorney and thankfully checked every detail of that contract. There were a number of things that Park Ave tried to included which I'm sure most people don't catch and end up paying thousands of dollars more than they need to. One such item was a "service" charge - separate and apart from tax, tip, etc. When I asked Denise what the "service" charge was for she told me it covered anything that broke or went missing because Park Ave would take inventory of all the items delivered from the rental company. When I pointed out that there was an express disclaimer from any and all liability in the contract which stated that Park Ave would not bear any responsibility for lost, broken items (including any items that their staff broke), she came up with another excuse for the fee. Next she said it was a mandatory charge that the company has to include because they essentially "manage" all of the rentals from the party rental company. However, when I asked what they were "managing" she couldn't tell me. Next, she said it was to cover the set-up and break-down of all of the tables and rentals. But I pointed out that there was already a separate line item charge for set-up and break-down in the contract. The "service" fee amounted to over $2,000 yet nobody could tell me what that $2,000 paid for.

5) Broken Glasses - When setting up, the bartender stacked the empty, clean glasses. While this is not unusual, the bartender stacked the glasses too high and on an unstable surface. My mother happened to walk by and saw this but before she could say anything 6-8 glasses fell and broke (which we had to pay to replace since they were rentals). The bartender was asked not to stack them again, but rather to leave them in the crates. This request was ignored and the glasses were stacked and fell and broke a second time. It took repeated requests (and many broken glasses) before the bartender finally stopped.

6) Extra Servers - One of our concerns was that all of the guests be served at the same time (relatively speaking). We've all been to weddings where half the guests are still on their first course, while the other half is done with their main course. We wanted to do what we could to prevent this. Our solution was to hire additional servers so that we would have one server per table. In addition, we had a significant amount of wine and we asked that each server be responsible for their one table (only 8-10 people) and refill wine glasses as needed. I'm not sure why we bothered because half the servers were young (seemed like high school age to me) and inexperienced (at least that was how it appeared). Generally speaking, they did a horrible job in attending to the needs of the guests at their assigned table and half the time, they couldn't be found (probably because they were busy eating wedding cake in the back).

7) Unauthorized Changes to a Contract with a Third Party Vendor - Denise called and made changes to a contract that I had with a third party rental company unbeknownst to me and without my approval.

We were very lucky to work with a lot of great vendors - unfortunately Park Ave Catering was not one of them. I would never use them again, nor do I recommend them. The caterer is a huge part of a wedding and if you don't have a good one that you can trust, it can wreak havoc on the day.