1. Maggiano's Little Italy
This was our first choice for so many reasons. First, I love it. I don't care if it's not authentic. I don't care that it's a chain. I love it. They serve food family style, giving it a casual and warm flair to dinner. They also have an all-you-can-eat menu for $25 per person. You can order two appetizers (mushroom ravioli is a must), two salads, two pastas (rigatoni D), two meat dishes (chicken saltimbocca) and two desserts (profiteroles and warm apple crostada). They'll keep filling up the bowls on whatever you finish. On top of that, it's literally across the street from our venue. We could take a nice stroll across the street to dinner and eliminate travel time between the rehearsal and dinner.
I quickly contacted their banquet department and got their menu. I looked through it. Yup! There was my beloved all-you-can-eat menu for $37 per person. *choke* excuse me?! $37 per person? I called the banquet manager back and she said it's a higher cost because you get a private room. Screw the private room. We'll sit out with the regular folk. Unfortunately, she wouldn't be able to seat 50 of us out in the main dining room. So, we were stuck with $37 per person or nothing.
2. Leatherby's Cafe Rouge
We quickly moved on. Our venue has a restaurant in it owned by our caterer, Patina Group. I asked our coordinator at Patina how much a rehearsal dinner would be at Leatherby's. She came back with a menu that was close to $50 per person. I mentioned that we had a pretty strict budget and gave her the numbers. She came back with a lunch menu for dinner at $30 per person, plus tax, plus a 20% administrative charge. That'd be $39 per person. Thanks, but no thanks. Too rich for my blood. I'd rather do Maggiano's if we were going to spend that much money. And...aren't we spending like a million dollars on you guys for catering? You couldn't cut us a little slack?!
3. Lucille's
We expanded our 2 block radius search and began looking for restaurants in all the surrounding cities. Ahh, there she is. In all her glory. Why didn't we think of it before? One of our favorite restaurants! Lucille's. It's also a chain, but it's got some darn good hot links and delish barbecue. The sauces are great too. I hate mustard usually, but I love this Memphis BBQ Sauce they have there that has a mustardy taste to it. We LOVE to eat and we especially love BBQ (we don't discriminate. We eat BBQ from all around the world. Though, I hate to say Korean might be our next favorite). We reluctantly dragged ourselves to Lucille's and had a dreadful dinner or hot links, beef ribs, baby back pork ribs, beans, corn, fries and mac'n'cheese. We toweled the BBQ sauce off our faces before approaching the manager to ask about having our rehearsal dinner here. She heartily agreed to our plan and said we could have the patio for the rehearsal as it would comfortably fit 50 hungry wedding helpers and family members. *AHHHHHH* (that was choirs of angels singing as the heavens opened up)
In the end, we're really glad that we found a place we love at a price we love. In addition to that, it'll be casual, fun, loud and delicious. So, the rehearsal dinner is booked and I'm going to have baby back ribs smothered in Memphis BBQ sauce the night before my wedding. If I don't fit into my dress, at least it would have been worth it! Hmm, maybe I should DIY some bibs for the wedding party?
Where are you having your rehearsal dinner? Is it a new place or an old favorite?
Soooo I'll be crashing your rehearsal dinner at Lucille's ;-)
ReplyDeleteJason and I used to frequent the one in Brea when he lived up there, for some reason he doesn't like the ones down here as much (there is another one in Lake Forest). Our favorite thing to do is get a side of brown gravy with the biscuits = SUPER TASTY!