Paella Party Catering

Paella Party/​Tapas SF Catering is a terrible company and Chef Ciado should never be able to do business. My wife and I met with Ciado about five months before our wedding for a tasting. Everything was great. We told him the number of people, the type of food/​hors d oeuvres and the service, family style. He said it was no problem and quoted us $ 7000 for 200 people for food and service (we rented tables, chairs, linens, tableware and tended our own bar) so we gave him a deposit for half the amount. The other half was due before the event along with the final guest count.
A month before the wedding, we met the the venue coordinator, the caterer and our day of coordinator to get everyone on the same page. Ciado was late for the meeting and was totally unprepared. We had to remind him of all the details again. The venue coordinator tells Ciado he can use the small kitchen but he needs to clean up after himself and leave it the way he came in.
Nine days prior to the wedding, I emailed Ciado the final guest count which ended up being 190 (less than estimated).
Six days before the wedding, Ciado calls my wife and says he under charged us and that the meat dish would not be enough. Foolishly, we trusted him and agreed to his request.
Four days before the wedding, Ciado emails me the final invoice. It now shows 190 guests, but instead of being $ 7000 it was up to $ 11,688. The meat dish was double what he previously quoted and the staff also doubled in size. He calls me to verify the delivery of the email and asks to pick up a check for the balance that day. Feeling pressured, knowing that it’s days away, we write him a check for the balance and also give him a photo of what the table setting would look like. We had discussed prior about setting up the tables and plates etc. which wasn’t a problem at the time.
The day of the wedding, we were told, Ciado arrived to the venue and was immediately rude and aggressive with the staff of the venue. The venue was a small museum and the staff were volunteers and mostly elderly. Our day of coordinator arrived to find the place settings were incorrect. She asked Ciado to fix it and he replied by saying «I am not gonna waste my time doing it again» even though he had a photo example of what it was supposed to look like.
We chose family style assuming the food would all come out together and everyone would be able to eat at the same time reasonably speaking instead of standing in a buffet line or something similar. That is not what happened and dinner dragged on for a couple hours. Some tables were done with dinner just as some were starting. One guest asked for butter for her bread and the server never came back. Another table didn’t have enough serving utensils and one guest saw a staff member eating while dinner was still going on. My bartender that I hired mentioned one of Ciado’s servers asked him for a job in the middle of dinner service. As dinner ended and dessert was supposed to be distributed, Ciado had no recollection of that being part of the contract. Luckily, one of his servers, possibly embarrassed, took charge of the situation and passed it for us along with two others. Suddenly, the person we met five months prior was not the same person we saw working at this event. He didn’t want to do anything we asked him to and yelled at our coordinators numerous times during the night.
Toward the end of the night, we noticed plates and glasses still on tables. Then I was told the whole catering staff had disappeared. I go over to the kitchen and find it to be a complete mess. Pans of food stacked up on counters (the amount of food ended up being so excessive we never needed the extra amount), garbage was not taken out, counters were a mess, floors were not mopped and the sink was clogged. Me, my wife and our great group of friends and family helped as we cleaned the venue on our wedding night until 1am. We tried to call Ciado for hours but he would not pick up his phone. Finally he calls and says he did everything he was supposed to in an angry tone. I told him he didn’t and the the place was still a mess and his services were not complete. Our argument went back and forth until I say «this is not over, either I will talk to you or my lawyer will.» He then responds by saying «F*** You!» to me and hangs up. That night I called my bank and canceled the final payment check.
Two days later we left for our honeymoon. We arrive at our hotel with a voice mail on our phone from Ciado. We didn’t respond to his message since we were on vacation and thought we would deal with it after we returned. The messages continued and became extremely threatening. Not only in a judicious manner but in physical threats as well. I thought to myself, «what if the check was cashed and the roles were reversed, would Ciado be quick to work things out?» We received threatening letters from his lawyer saying that they would take us to court and that it would cost us even more. continued…

Don’t do it!!! This guy is unprofessional and a total rip off artist. After contracting with him to cater my birthday party with really close friends. I also planned on using the occasion to propose to my long time girlfriend. I can honestly say, once I signed the initial agreement with «Chef» Ciado everything from there was a complete nightmare… He tried to increase the charge by over 35% within days of the event, and when confronted he basically told me he would no longer discuss anything with me and it was industry standard to add all the service charge fees, misc fees and gratuity up front totaling almost $ 500 above the contracted amount?
This was days before the event and I could not believe how he could be doing business like this and actually get away with it? To make things even worse, he never showed up, but rather sent his teenage son and daughter to cater my event. When I asked where was the «Paella Chef» I hired, I was simply told he didn’t feel well… no heads up… no phone call? After I confronted him he told me «If I was unhappy they could just leave» he would simply tell his kids to abort the party and I would be out the $ 700 deposit! WHAT? This was hrs before my guest were to arrive and dinner would be served… He over promised and under delivered in a big way.
Please… you were warned! Don’t do it!

So I wrote this review in regards to the catering services on this page, Paella Party Catering because this is to whom my credit card was charged to.
I was then contacted and harassed by the owner and told that Tapas SF Catering did my catering, not Paella Party Catering… even though Ciado is mentioned in the reviews here and is the same person that catered my event.
So I’m updating my review to state that Paella Party Catering did NOT do a bad job of catering my party, Tapas SF Catering did. You can search them and it’s the same contact number, different website. I posted this review under Unilocal’s Tapas SF Catering page.
One-​star because I’m being threatened with legal action now.
I still wouldn’t recommend this catering company to anyone. Please BEWARE!

Since I have a basic trust that a person will do as they say, I was extremely disappointed in Chef Ciado and his handling of my important event. The crew arrived (late) unprepared to follow through with the agreed menu. There were no glasses for the sangria (plastic cups instead), and a one hour delay before the sangria was served. Chef Ciado was rude when contacted about the inadequate service. On the positive side, the paella that was prepared was quite good, but there was no vegetarian paella prepared as promised.