A diner from Cuyahoga Falls OH
Sep 19, 2011
We attended a clambake catered by Rachel's on 17 September 2011 at Mastropietro Winery. The available buffet serving times were 4:30 to 5:15, 5:30 to 6:15, 6:30 to 7:15, and 7:30 to 9:00. We'd made reservations for six at 4:30 p.m. at $28 per person. That's $168 for the food alone, not even counting the wine we ordered to go with it. When we called to make our reservations, we were told to make sure we arrived at least half an hour or forty-five minutes early for our wine-tasting so that we'd have time to choose our dinner wine(s) before the food was served piping hot promptly at 4:30. We did, but we needn't have bothered. The caterers weren't ready at 4:30; it would be, they said, another fifteen minutes before the food would be served. But they weren't ready at 4:45 either. Another ten minutes, they said. That sort of thing continued until 5:15 (and the wine we'd ordered to have with our dinner) had come and gone. The caterers were unapologetic and rude; the head caterer seemed to think the whole thing was a joke. (Having spent $168 on their non-service, we weren't quite as amused as this grinning lout was.) The winery staff, to whose attention we repeatedly brought the problem, did nothing whatsoever except (eventually) check with the caterer and return with the same "information" the caterer had already given us directly: that the food would be ready in a few more minutes. (It wasn't.) A bit after 5:20, when it still wasn't ready, we asked for a refund and left. One of our dinner guests was my wife's brother, who was visiting us from the UK over his birthday; the special dinner turned out to be not quite as special as we'd hoped. On the plus side, we ended up having dinner at Dino's Italian Restaurant & Pizza in North Jackson. Great food, great service, and far better than the "catered" clambake would have been.
