Weddings & Catering

Caterer - service - Top Rated/Excellent

Nancy & Doug,

Thank you so very much for everything – courteous service, attention to detail, awesome food and presentation, cordial staff, and well planned out setup to clean-up. We thoroughly enjoyed working with you and your team, and will highly recommend you to whomever needs a top rated caterer. In fact, we have added you tour referral list that goes out to all prospective wedding and other event groups.

Again, thank you for everything!

Best Wishes,

James G. Pellegrini
Owner/Innkeeper/Minister
The Fox and the Grapes, Bed & Breakfast
9496 State Route 414, Lodi, NY. 14860
607.582.7528
info@thefoxandthegrapes.com
www.thefoxandthegrapes.com

In the early part of the summer of 2008, my wife and I set out to plan our wedding. Those of you who have been through this process already know the great, enveloping waves of stress that come along with this monumental task. It looks easy on paper- you get a bunch of people in a room, you feed them and give them some cake, and somewhere in the middle of all this are two people who are forever joined in wedlock. Again, on paper it’s a no-brainer, but the stresses of pulling it all together are enough to send sane men scampering into the treetops.

Our wedding was no exception.

Things fell into place and out of place, over and over again, and while it seemed like one step forward led to two steps back (or three), we never expected the food to be the biggest challenge. Without going into too much detail, I will tell you that there are many caterers who will be happy to take your money, be glad to NOT return your phone calls, and be merry to tell you exactly what you want, even if it’s the LAST thing you want. There are caterers that will ignore your pleas for commitment, only to finally contact you out of the blue 10 days before the wedding like all is well. These are the type of places who don’t really seem to get the meaning of the word “caterer”.

Then there is Blue Stone.

The Blue Stone Bar and Grill did everything right, and I do mean everything. Right from the start, my wife and I got a good feeling about the place. We started by meeting the chef and owner, Douglas Gruen, on a Saturday afternoon and sitting down with him at Blue Stone to review menu options, the date, the venue, and all the details in between. This alone was one of the shining moments in our entire wedding plan schedule. Doug never treated us like a number, never required us to conform to a pre-made catering “checklist” that barely covered the details we wanted in our cuisine, and best of all his level of enthusiasm for the job matched our own. It seemed too good to be true, and later that day when we went back to Blue Stone and ordered a large sampling of the foods we were considering, our choice was made. From the freshness of ingredients to the unique attention to detail, the food at Blue Stone is nothing short of amazing.

As time passed we were happy to discover that not only was Doug great to deal with, and his food enough to make your taste buds scintillate in delight, but we also struck up a great working rapport with his wife, Nancy Gruen, who handled most of the catering correspondence leading up to the event. Always professional and always a pleasure to deal with, all of the details of the event fell into place under the wing of Nancy. After our long nightmare of caterers who refused to return calls, would not bend to even our simplest requests, and who seemed to treat our special day like an inconvenience to their busy schedule, to say these people made us feel “catered” to, is an understatement. Changes to the menu were no problem at all. Last minute additions were taken in stride. Communication was open, and life was good.

But, the wedding day still loomed on the horizon.....

The day of the wedding came and once again, Blue Stone delivered, and delivered big. Our menu featured a large selection of their amazing appetizer array, from Grilled Thai Chicken skewers with peanut sauce, to Santa Fe Black Bean Crab Cakes, to everything in between. Deciding to not have formal dining at the wedding, and have more of all those wonderfully decadent appetizers served up at stomach filling portions, our food needs were unique to say the least, and certainly not what you’d call an “simple” catering job. The Blue Stone crew made every aspect of the event look easy. With a combination of a buffet area and passed appetizers that never hovered too far away and always seemed to come by right when needed, the food was well presented and mouth watering. I have personally always been a fan of bacon wrapped scallops, and to taste Blue Stone’s was to take my palate to another level altogether.

When it was all said and done, and the people who came from all over the country were full of food, drink, and a good cheer, the comments and praises for our unique wedding came flooding in. People loved our huge wine selection, went crazy for our sinful cheesecake wedding cake, and went on and on about the food, the FOOD, THE FOOD!! In the end, Doug, Nancy, and indeed all of the friendly staff at Blue Stone did what only months ago I thought was impossible. They didn’t just provide food for our wedding at a professional and courteous level I personally thought was gone from the world, they wowed me, and they wowed the people I love in this world the most.

If someone were to ask me to recommend a caterer for any event, I would not provide them with a list, merely a name- Blue Stone Bar and Grill. I would recommend that they start and end their search with this fantastic place and its wonderful owners. I would tell them to get ready for culinary delights, an exquisite attention to detail, and a level of courtesy that can’t be topped. Then I would ask them for the time and place of the event, so I could crash it and reap the benefits of sampling once again the wonderful creations of this incredible restaurant.

Rob and Alison Sedler