Absolute Barbecue & Catering by Dana

Great job with the catering at a Vegas themed party at the company I work at. I loved the French appetizers the most and we also had another more Asian centered food that was great too. The ice cream had lots of toppins to chose from and the bar service was cordial and impeccable. The whole ensemble turned out to be very good and I could not hear anyone complaining about the food taste.

Absolute did a great job 2 years ago for a Commitment ceremony in our yard for about 100 people. So good that our friend Sylvia asked them to cater for a big party at her house Sunday.
Great food, excellent selection for all. Grilled ribs, chicken, potato salad, veggie chill, more. Full bar.
Excellent service from set up to end. Very nice linens, glasses, plates, etc. A real delight.

Dana catered my son’s wedding. Coordinated by Kacey, all was planned and executed professionally. Florist and D.J. were the icing. Servers for a large group (±300) were superb. Would definitely recommend.

Absolute Barbecue & Catering by Dana just catered our wedding and did a stellar job.
The food was great, and well received by our guests, and the servers seemed to actually enjoy what they were doing, which is nice to see!
The assistance that we got from coordinator Kacey was priceless. She was always available for our emails and one off questions, and helped us to see any flaws in our thinking without making us feel like our ideas weren’t worthy. She really took every step to help us make our vision come true! No question was too small, no request too silly.
The closer we got to the big day it became very apparent that we would have nothing to worry about– Kacey and her team managed every element of set up, helped us decorate the tables, and coordinated the timeline of events throughout the evening flawlessly.
We received many compliments from guests on how on top of things the team was, and how friendly they were.
If we could give you more than 5 stars, we would!
Thank you!

I would highly recommend this company! We had a wedding reception for 70 people this last weekend, and everything was wonderful. It was great to work with Kacey and Jason, and all the rest of their staff. The food was great, and so was the service throughout the night. Thanks again!

Absolute Barbecue was absolutely wonderful to work with! I give them 5+ stars for a 55 person event I recently through at a large park in Palo Alto. Kacey made everything so simple; she was easy to work with and completely thorough. Our finance teams loved all of the food and the two people who set up and served our food gave us impeccable customer service as well. Being an executive assistant for years and working with many Bay Area caterers, I have to admit I was nervous to venture out and try a new caterer. Absolute Barbeque did not disappoint. To top off the amazing ribs, chicken, veggie burgers, chili and amazing corn bread muffins, they did a wonderful ice cream sundae bar which was a huge hit!

I just stumbled across their truck at the corner of Middlefield and Willow on Monday night. I got there special mac and cheese. This stuff is amazing! !! They have a customer for life. I bought several items off of another truck that night and I felt as though it was not good and very expensive. The food from ABC is a great value and is outstanding. I will try my best to locate them again. The food was incredible.

I am the Event Manager for the San Carlos Chamber of Commerce, and Absolute Barbecue was one of our new food vendors this year at our October Art & Wine Faire. This Faire draws over 70,000 visitors over two days, and we are extremely proud of the many food offerings that we have. Working with Kacey and Absolute Barbecue was a joy, and they were an awesome addition. Their amazing red truck draws lots of attention, but their excellent food and service is where they excel. It appeared they were swamped most of the weekend, and all I heard were compliments. They have an outstanding and delicious menu… something for everyone… and they are fairly priced. We hope they will be part of the Faire every year, and I know we will work with them on other San Carlos events. We love them and highly recommend Absolute Barbecue for your event… no matter how big or small.

I had Absolute Barbecue cater my company picnic at Huddart Park and they were terrific! They had a great set up, tent covered food tables, drink and dessert sections. The food was delicious and the staff (they sent 3 people!) were also great.
Kacey was wonderful to work with, very professional and accommodating. She was super responsive to my many emails! This was the first time i had used this caterer so I was a little nervous, but everything went perfectly! I will definitely use them again, and again, and again!

ABC caters to our company’s annual BBQ and I’ve always loved their food — especially the ribs. Much to my surprise (and delight) their food truck served right outside our building today. I went for the tri-​tip sandwich and it was so good I had to tell my coworkers who were hesitant on buying some food to go out and try it. The meat fairly generous for its price and the ingredients (mushroom, Gorgonzola cheese) made it so much better. Even the roll was well toasted. I heard they gave out samples of their pizza and that it was also good, but apparently I was a little too early for that. :(. Gotta try that next (hoping they will come back)!

I am super appreciative for the work that the ABC team put into making our event great… we did ribs/​chicken/​beans/​potato salad/​corn muffins/​salad/​watermelon menu and everyone seemed to think the food was great… it wasn’t as «hot“as i had hoped but I also realized that it was our fault in starting later than we had told them originally. The Black Bean Burgers were a little on the overcooked (slight char) than I think people are accustomed to… and I was sad to see them go to waist.
Julie was helpful in answering all my questions and getting back to me in a timely fashion.
Jason the onsite person, was polite, super helpful, professional, and friendly… I was super nervous about the event going off without a hitch… and he was super reassuring, and overall just a super host.
will definitely use again.

Absolute BBQ came to the Woodside Horse Trials over Memorial Day weekend and provided the event with delicious food for three days running. Everyone was talking about how good the food was and how refreshing it was to have high quality food on site, finally.
Friday, I tried the BBQ pulled pork sandwich and it was great. Not too sweet, not too salty it was the perfect balance of flavors and moistness. My friend had the tri tip sandwich and loved it.
I came back Sunday with other friends, and had the Margherita pizza with black olives, mushrooms and broccoli rabe. It was fantastic. I think they put a pizza oven in the retro bus! The server announced it as Margherita pizza with everything on the menu and he wasn’t wrong. But it hit the spot after a long weekend of horse showing!
My friends got a big plate of ribs and loved them. I hope they come back in August, and can come to my work for a new lunch option.
My only caveat is at $ 14.72 for my pizza, it was a little expensive for a normal lunch, but I don;t think I would have eaten the whole thing on a normal day.

Julie is awesome!
We had absolute BBQ & Catering by Dana cater our wedding, and we couldn’t have been happier! From the beginning Julie was great. She always answers the phone or gets back to you quickly, plus she has so many wedding tips. She has done a lot of weddings and really knows what she is doing. My mom and I bothered her with so many silly little questions, and she was always more than happy to help in any way possible.
It was great working with her and she was really sweet.
It wasn’t until the wedding day that I knew just how great this company was! They did so much to help make our day perfect. They had great hors d’oeuvres for our guests during cocktail hour, and during that time, they also moved all of our 100 chairs from the ceremony location to the reception area about 300 yards away! We were going to have our guests do it, but it was so nice to not have them worry about it! They provided a coffee station as well, which was great.
When it came time to transition to dinner, Julie was on top of organizing everyone, and most importantly, made sure that my husband and I got to eat! She is big on making sure the bride and groom get to enjoy their own wedding day meal :)
Julie kept everything moving throughout the evening. She was on top of the timeline, but also flexible if something needed to be pushed back or forward a little. She was like our day of wedding planner :)
The food was to die for! We loved it and our guests are still talking about it!
We highly recommend absolute BBQ!
Thanks for everything!

This is a long overdue Unilocal!review for my late July 2013 wedding.
Julie Simonin absolutely rocked my wedding.
Weeks before my wedding I got a call from Julie, she was calling to let me know that Kacey, the person I had specifically contacted at ABC to work my wedding was leaving ABC. Inside, I thought… bad words and sobbing sounds… but Julie was so fantastic on that call, I didn’t freak out… and Julie would go on to prove that I had no reason to.
We wanted really good family-​style BBQ at our wedding. I contacted a few caterers and ABC stood out head and shoulders above the others. To be fair, we only received bids from the other caterers, but ABC was the first tasting that we went to, and after that we didn’t feel we needed to look any further.
The food at our wedding was GREAT, and the team working the event was WONDERFUL.
Julie was so AMAZING, she was patient, and so helpful. She met me at our venue prior to the event, which while beautiful proved to be a unique challenge. We were married and had our reception at the Trocadero Clubhouse Stern Grove. She worked with me to figure out how to get 120 guests seated for dinner, which was no simple feat.
The day of our wedding a few things did not go quite as planned (have you ever heard of wedding where everything went exactly according to plan), but Julie remained calm and flexible. There were lots of extra touches, she cut roses that my Mom brought and decorated our little cake with them. She thought of the details that I forgot, and she did her darndest to keep us on schedule.
ABC BBQ, Julie Simonin, and the staff really made our wedding wonderful. The food was fantastic, and the service was lovely. I didn’t get to thank Julie properly on our wedding day since things were so crazy, but I am really thankful that she took over for Kacey and that she did such a wonderful job.
Thank you so much for making our wedding so fantastic!!!

Our school worked with Kacey for a Family BBQ in Huddart Park and we could not be happier with their food and service! The staff at the event was prompt, courteous and helped clean up. Kacey was very willing to work with us to make the event affordable and really went the extra mile! Will definitely use them again and again!

I’m trying to figure out if the owner, Stephanie Tchalamov, is purposely trying to misunderstand me or if I am simply not clear enough. Either way, I am compelled to reexamine the facts:
POINT #1
«We are sorry you felt that Kacey was ‘not accommodating & cagey.’ I would have loved to been able to speak with you before the event to discuss the issues you were having.»
Well, I don’t know about other people, but when I feel that someone is not accommodating and cagey, I’m hesitant to go deeper into matters with them, ESPECIALLY when it’s in food services. At that point, I felt like I either had to find another caterer or just take the hit, which is what I did. That being said, just because I took the hit doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t vocalize what happened, especially when it may help others down the road.
POINT #2
«I believe that there were definitely some things that you misunderstood. For example, when Kacey quoted you $ 50 for vegetables you thought she meant that we would only supply veggies for 3 guests. That was not the case. The charge would have been $ 1 per person ($ 1×50 guests = $ 50) additional for all your guests to have the vegetables. Which in the end, we did add to your menu at no additional charge. «
Quite contrary, I did not misunderstand and in fact wrote in my original review that «I didn’t need grilled vegetables for everyone but just needed three plates for vegetarians». Whether it was $ 50 or $ 0.50, I was being asked to pay more when I was already well above my budget. Again, it’s the principal of the matter and I don’t think it was justified. Actually, I think Stephanie misunderstood because they DID NOT «add to (our) menu at no additional charge» but rather swapped out our corn on the cob for the grilled vegetables, which is also stated on my original review. Her rebuttal was false and misleading.
POINT #3
«There was an error on the timeline on your original proposal, which was noticed before she sent you the updated proposal with your requested time change. That is what caused the labor charge to increase. Again, if you would have called in to discuss this before your event we could have come to a resolution that would have made everyone happy. «
I still believe that Kacey tried to fix the timeline in order to charge me more for the same service. As the owner, Stephanie could potentially be loyally defending her employee and/​or covering her assets. She can claim that they needed ten million hours of prep time to set up if she wanted to — but the fact remains that Kacey quoted me a certain figure and later changed it. Even IF she made an error, it is proper business practice to disclose this information to your client. She had two opportunities to do so: once when she altered the figures and also when I questioned the rate change even though I was requesting the same number of service hours. Yes, I did address the increase in labor charge, as also noted in my original review. It is not my job to call in to discuss this but rather her job to answer me when I asked about it. Instead, she just glazed over it and cut my service time and increased the prep time.
POINT #4
«We are very surprised by your negative comments about Kacey. If you look through our other Unilocal reviews we have never received anything but great reviews about her. Kacey has worked here for over 5 years and has always had an incredible rapport with all of her clients. We hope that you will reconsider your stance on our company as we feel that this review is quite misleading «
She is surprised by my comments but is she surprised by Kacey’s actions? As a Unilocaler, it’s not my responsibility to report on the experiences of other reviewers but rather share my own personal experiences. I cannot speak on how ABC employees treated other clients but only how Kacey treated me. I did research her raving reviews from other customers (2 total) and found it interesting that the two customers only have 3 and 4 total reviews on their profile. I am not saying that everyone’s individual opinions don’t count (quite contrary since I am in the minority amongst many 4 – 5 star reviews) but I tend to give more clout to regular reviewers and am wary of those who post few and far between, much like the 21 filtered reviews for ABC. Also, just because something hasn’t been documented before doesn’t mean it never happened. Or just because something didn’t happen before doesn’t mean it will never happen. The fact that ABC is taking the defense approach on damage control rather than constructively trying to improve themselves into becoming the company they want to be only strengthens my stance as a consumer.
MEH.

I was very disappointed at the amount of and quality of food provided by Absolute Barbeque and Catering for an event at Big Dog Vineyard last night. When I decided to write the review I did what I normally do, and read all the previous Unilocal reviews. Honestly, after reading many of the other reviews, I actually went back to the Big Dog website, to Absolute Barbecue’s website, and to my own pictures of the catering truck that was parked onsite because I couldn’t believe I was experiencing the same company as the other Unilocalers.
For starters (and this is not 100% the fault of Absolute Barbecue, but I think it is at least 90% their fault), the Big Dog Vineyards’ website listed the parking opening at 5:00pm, and food from 5:30 — 6:30. We arrived at 5:15pm and plenty of people had already been eating — for some time it seems. How do I know? Well, because Absolute Barbecue had only one bowl of salad left and completely run out of chicken. The winery knew the event was sold out — weeks before the concert — so there should have been enough food for everyone, especially 15 minutes before the buffet was even set to begin! We waited in line for a ‘fresh’ bowl of salad, but it was warm and wilty, and gone before my friends arrived to join us, at 5:30. The mac and cheese was really good, but barely warm, so it kind it had kind of a gelatinous texture (not a word used to describe good food). As mentioned, the chicken was almost gone (again, at 5:15 ¹⁄₃ of their food was gone, and the buffet wasn’t set to begin until 5:30) — just one piece left, which I had, along with a rib and a pork slider. The flavor of the food was good — the Pulled Pork was seasoned very well, and the flavor profile of the barbecue sauce on the chicken was also very good. Honestly, I think the food probably started out good, but at the time it was served it was barely lukewarm, which is a very unappetizing temperature for meat. My friends that showed up at 5:30 seemed even more unimpressed than I was, but were nice enough to not say anything to me since I had invited them to join me at this winery for dinner and the concert.
In general, either the company did not prepare enough food for the number of people attending (which was not a sudden change), or should have told the patrons we were limited to the number of meat options we could select. The food was not warm — and I don’t mean hot, I mean even warm. If the food was set to be served at 5:30, and the servers kept to that time, maybe everything would have been at the correct temperature. Honestly, I think the salad was warmer than the meat. As a catering company, they should know how to store their catering trays to keep the food at a healthy temperature. This is not even an issue that any food company in business should not know how to handle.
While I’m glad to see many other people had a different opinion of ABC, my experience, however, was not even close to the others.

Had my party at Picchetti Winery and ABC was on their list. So I called and spoke to Stephanie who took the time to understand the feel and type of food I wanted — an upscale grilled meal that my hubby and I would normally make. So we decided on tri-​tip and salmon, a saffron and pinenut rice, grilled veggies and a greek salad. How easy was that! Dessert was an assortment of tarts — get the crème brûlée — and a tea/​coffee service.
While the food wasn’t as good as my hubby makes on the grill, I was amazed that they could cater to 60 people on the spot and still taste good.
Shannon arrived with her crew on the day of the event and they did an amazing job, setting up, feeding us (buffet style) and cleaning up after. They made it appear seemless. And they boxed up the leftovers for us to take home.
It came out to about $ 60/​pp with rentals. The venue provided the chairs and tables, but ABC brought everything else.
And I didn’t have to think about it or worry about it. They are professional, nice and they really know what they are doing.
Highest marks and I will definitely work with them again.

I recently got married at the Presidio in San Francisco and had to choose a caterer from a prescribed list of approved caterers. We were BEYOND happy with our choice to go with Absolute Catering Company. We worked with Julie Simonin, and I honestly couldn’t say enough great things about her organization, friendliness, flexibility, and hard work! Prior to the wedding, she worked with me as I continuously changed my menu, and made wonderful suggestions on her favorite items and things we could do to have an elegant display and stay on budget.
The food was great! Grilling the meat on-​site, rather than preparing hours in advance and letting it sit avoids that «stale wedding food» dilemma. We received a so many complements on the quality of the food. But really the best part of our choice was the quality of service. My husband and I were both in the food industry, and I have done plenty of catering, and ABC far surpassed my expectations. These are professional caterers, and not just some temporary staff making cash for one night only. They were friendly and responsive, and I’ve never seen hard work like the kind Julie did for us.
ABC did everything for us, from the rentals, to the food, to the service. I was not disappointed with one part of it!
Thank you Julie so much for making our day perfect!!! I will contact you again for our next event!

BBQ = fabulous. Absolutely so!
Burgers = delicious. Juicy. And put on all the fixin’s as you see fit! :D
Potato salad = crack. It was addicting.
Chili = to die for… I had to go back and get seconds, thirds…
Chicken…juicy, perfectly grilled and nice BBQ sauce!
Watermelon = omnom on a hot day like yesterday in South City!
Service = friendly, efficient