Culinary Artistry

Culinary Artistry catered our wedding this past September. Like a previous reviewer, we were very impressed by the food, and many of our guests said it was the best wedding food they’d ever eaten. Unfortunately, when it came to our contract and customer service before the wedding, Culinary Artistry was unprofessional, and we felt incredibly let down.
We had some issues with them from the start:
–I was planning my wedding from across the country, but the owner, David Welch, promised that we would be able to have at least a partial tasting of our menu when we visited in the spring. When we showed up for our meeting, both he and the kitchen seemed unprepared to give us a tasting; they rushed out a piece of fish that was prepared differently from how it would be for the wedding, and they included a couple dishes off the restaurant menu. Tasty, but not our wedding food. Their excuse was that our menu needed ingredients that were not in season, but I saw someone order farro with mushrooms (on our menu) in the restaurant. And when are chicken and potatoes not in season?
–David also said we could do a wine and beer tasting to select beverages for our wedding. Again, that never happened, and the excuse was that they would only know about two weeks ahead of time which wines would be available to us.
–David assured us that either he or he and Jessica, the event manager, would be at our event to make sure everything ran smoothly. A month before the wedding, they told us that there was a possibility neither of them would be there. We might be working with a total stranger whom we’d never met.
We could have turned a blind eye to those things, but how they treated us when it came to the contract was unacceptable.
When I was researching vendors, I received quotes from a number of caterers, all of whom included rentals in their contracts. We signed our contract with CA knowing that the amount listed was an estimate, expecting that the final cost might differ by a couple hundred dollars. But about a month before the wedding, they contacted us to confirm our needs, and the rental cost was $ 1100 more than we agreed to. They exceeded the estimate by 69%!
We proceeded to have a long back and forth over phone and email discussing the discrepancy. Never at any point did they give us a reason as to why their estimate was so off, nor would they take responsibility for it.
Nothing about our event had changed. They knew the number of people, the menu, and the location from the start. Either someone didn’t know what they were doing when they drafted our contract or they were lazy and just put down a random number. We were told that they usually don’t give estimates because they are difficult to predict – then why were we given one? Especially one that they refused to stand by.
I proceeded to go through the rentals myself, item by item, cutting pieces to reduce the total. Our final guest count turned out to be lower than the original estimate, and CA tried to take credit for that, saying that they brought the cost down.
We asked to speak to David directly and were told multiple times that he was too difficult to pin down and that he knew our situation and would not negotiate or acknowledge any wrong-​doing. All we could do was vent to Jessica, who tried her best to be diplomatic and was exceedingly polite but ultimately had no power to make the situation right.
A week before our wedding, and they demanded that we sign a new contract with the revised rental total. We felt like our wedding was being held hostage and that we had no other options on such short notice.
We agreed; our event went smoothly; Jessica was there; and the food was very good. We had a wonderful day because it was our wedding, but I would not wish this experience on anyone. Unless you are or have an excellent lawyer and you get every detail spelled out in your contract before signing, there are plenty of other, more professional caterers to choose from. With some foresight, we probably would have gone with Simpatica.

We had CA cater a office party. Too many problems in a competitive market to give them a good review. The meatballs were served raw. The 3 types of «bruschetta» had the same flavor profiles. When I asked the servers what meat they were serving, they didn’t know. When I asked the servers who is doing the catering they didn’t know. We prepaid for cases of wine and beer which they promptly left the premises with at the end of the night. We are not talking a couple bottles — we are talking CASES! When asked if we get reimbursed for the alcohol not consumed, the reply was ‘No’. We demanded they leave it in the office. We also didn’t get to keep the food — everything was taken. This is unacceptable. Now they want to charge us for a single mysteriously «missing» wineglass. The food is mediocre to poor, as Portland has many better catering options who utilize more competent servers.

We had CA cater our wedding and their food is incredible! I give their food 5+ stars. The whole review for CA gets 4 stars because we had some contract hiccups. We had made an agreement with their contact person about liquor, wine and beer arrangements which were changed when that contact person left CA. I would have really liked to keep our original agreement but in the end, we had to keep going with CA because it was too close to our wedding to change the caterer. Also, we had some logistical issues with the alcohol on the day of. However, we do not regret having gone with CA. Their food was delicious and memorable and they were generally very easy to work with.

We had them cater our wedding. The owner, whom I worked with along the way was very disorganized and unprofessional. I had to continuously repeat things in emails and re-​ask questions that wouldn’t get answered the first time around. It was a big waste of time when I was very busy with all the other planning. The day of the catering staff was 40 minutes late to set up, forcing my husband and friends to do the majority of the set-​up. To top it off, the food was cold… and we were the first ones to eat! I will never go to any of her restaurants (Sunshine Tavern and Lincoln) again.