The Urban Chef Reviews

Name: The Urban Chef
Address: 834 SW 141st St, Seattle, WA, 98166
Telephone: 2069139085
Rating: 3.5

The Urban Chef

Seattle, WA

3.5 out of 5 rating, 12 reviews

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Reviews

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3.5 out of 5 rating

3.5

12 reviews

Recommended by 70% of couples

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Quality of service
3.5 out of 5 rating
Average response time
3.5 out of 5 rating
Professionalism
3.4 out of 5 rating
Value
3.6 out of 5 rating
Flexibility
3.6 out of 5 rating

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Janet Sent on 02/09/2016

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Rachel is fabulous! From start to finish, we enjoyed our experience. Wonderful to work with, delicious food (to include our special requests of venison), great presentation (straight out of Pinterest). Just all around pleased. Thank you so much for your attentiveness to details.
Kelly Sent on 02/04/2016

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The Urban Chef catered our small wedding. Rachel was extremely professional, prompt, and worked with our tight budget. Food was amazing and she also provided an extra dessert at no cost. Thanks Urban Chef and especially Rachel, you made our wedding stress free and the food was tasty!!
Bobbi Sent on 02/04/2016

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Didn't use them for a wedding, but for a corporate event. The food is AMAZING, the staff and Rachel (the owner) were on top of everything. and the price point was perfect! Would definitely recommend to anyone looking for a caterer.

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Margaret Sent on 02/02/2016

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Rachel at the Urban Chef catered my birthday in September 2015, and we hired her for our wedding on July 23, 2016. She was/is responsive to our culinary wants and budgetary needs; figuring out menu selections that work within both constraints. She has made suggestions and has helped us trim costs where we can. She is creative in her menus and really listened to us when we expressed certain choices we wanted. Her food is fresh, prepared well, tastefully presented, and tastes sooooo goooood! I highly recommend Urban Chef for any catering that you might need; and will absolutely use her again in the future.
Bobbi Sent on 01/26/2016

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They were amazing! Totally in my price range! Very responsive to change and quantity for the event. Loved connecting with the owner and her staff, very friendly. Will book again!
Albert Sent on 01/26/2016

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This was a military reunion. The Urban Chef gave our attendees a 5-star experience, the food was fresh, nicely presented and very delicious.
Jasmine Sent on 06/05/2016

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Rachel of The Urban Chef catered our wedding in October 2015. It was 250 people, buffet style (cocktail hour and sit down dinner). A LOT. She did an amazing job. Hire her.

FOOD: Before meeting her, she offered an abundance of menus. We were able to customize exactly what we wanted in terms of food. The food was delicious. The menu including salmon which I imagine is difficult to do and it tasted amazing.

DRINK: Rachel also coordinated our bartender services which worked flawlessly and was super helpful with suggestions.

DESIGN: Not part of her job but she worked with our wedding coordinator on design ideas.

The wedding took place on Vashon, and her and her assistant came out to survey the area. She also was extremely accomodating with my bridezilla requests including bread from my favorite bakery, and putting raspberries in the champagne glasses. One of our best decisions was hiring her as she made the wedding great.
Joni Sent on 03/06/2017

4.6 out of 5 rating
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I was helping my daughter plan a party for thirty-five individuals for her boyfriend's 40th Birthday Party. She wanted a venue with a view and needed tables, drapes, piping, food, bar, etc. I spent one week looking for someplace in the Kirkland, Bellevue or Seattle area that would be able to supply what my daughter's needs were and could not find anything for under 8 to 10 thousand dollars. Finally we realize that they already had the perfect venue which was one of the floor's in their office building which their company owned with a beautiful view of Lake Washington.
My daughter actually was the one who sent me the link to the Urban Chef and wanted me to check it out. After talking to Rachel and finding out that she worked closely with someone who could supply all the extra party materials like the piping and draping and the red carpet I was excited because I didn't want to have to spend time trying to coordinate everything.
I found Rachel to be both willing to work with us on a specific menu catering to the likes of my daughter's boyfriend and the food was fabulous. Her displays were really well done and creative and her work ethic was unbelievable. The place looked beautiful and she was an expert at clearing tables and keeping everything stocked without being in anyone's way. She is not invisible because she is a very pretty woman but she is not intrusive and moves quickly and quietly. Her staff were very hard workers and complemented the evening by also moving quickly and quietly.
One of the things I liked best about working with Rachel was not just that she supplied the best price for an amazing tasting menu but that I got the feeling she really wanted the experience to be perfect. She ended up coming up with little things, without charging us at the end, that she thought added to the overall look of the venue. To me, this means that she is interested in doing the best job she can and making sure the experience is uniquely special!
Jana Sent on 07/06/2017

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Regret. In addition, still awaiting our financial award from small claims court with Rachel:Urban Chef for numerous unmet contracted services and menu items. Expected far more.
Stacey Sent on 09/07/2017

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We booked Rachel for our wedding on June 17th, 2017 and this was by far the worst decision we made for our wedding. Do not book The Urban Chef
1. Rachel double booked us and never even showed up to our wedding due to "car troubles". I now see another person who left a review with the same wedding date- and Rachel got there at 5:15pm but was supposed to be there much earlier, our contract stated that Rachel was supposed to be at our wedding from 11AM-8PM.
2. Rachel consistently had terrible communication from the moment we paid her our $1K deposit. It took me multiple emails for her to respond to a simple email in the 6 months leading to our wedding.
3. Immediately after we paid our $1K deposit and gave her our credit card information, that same and only that credit card had fraudulent charges made. I asked Rachel about this and she told me her email was "hacked" and someone stole our credit card info.
4. I say this again, but Rachel never even showed up on our wedding day and our friend had to miss the ceremony in hopes that her staff would arrive before cocktail hour needed to start. She told us we would have 5 staff on our wedding day plus herself, in reality, 2 staff showed up 2 hours late. My day of coordinator called the staff numerous times during that time span and repeatedly he was told that they were 10 minutes late and when he called Rachel, she continuously rejected his calls.
5. There was not enough food. We paid for 5 hors d'oeuvres and actually only had 2. Our guests had to have very small servings and we paid for side dishes that never appeared. The only positive is that our guests said the food they did get to eat tasted good.
6. Finally, after the wedding I waited one week for her to reach out to apologize for the mess she created. She never reached out. I had to contact her multiple times until I got a response, she told me she would follow up with my email requesting a refund and never responded until I (4 weeks later) filed a dispute
Brianna Sent on 07/24/2017

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We hired the Urban Chef for our wedding on June 17th, 2017. We met with Rachel the Sunday before our wedding to give her all of our decorations and wine. We were not prepared to pay that day, so we paid through PayPal. After a series of anxiety ridden texts, she followed up to get an extra $1,000 from my husband because PayPal wasn't going through quick enough. Urban Chef has yet to refund us the extra $1,000 and will not respond to calls or texts. On the day of our wedding, she was supposed to come early to set up all the decorations. Our ceremony was supposed to start at 5:00 pm. The Urban Chef catering team didn't show up until about 5:15 pm, so none of our decorations went up until after the wedding. The food tasted good but we had comments from wedding guests saying the bacon wasn't cooked through and there were plastic covered snack bars that looked like they came from 7-11. They also ran out of some of the food dishes. We paid for food for 130 people and there was a maximum of 120 there. Buyer beware.
Aj Sent on 02/08/2017

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Our holiday party was excruciatingly disappointing. The venue wasn't checked prior to the event and it snowed that morning. We called early and Rachel told us her GPS indicated her ETA was 10 minutes. One assistant arrived 30 minutes later saying Rachel was “on the way” but she had no supplies and wasn't able to begin set-up. We repeatedly called but Rachel did not pick up her phone and voicemail was full. Being unfamiliar with the venue, Rachel had difficulty finding the entrance and arrived as our event was scheduled to start with most of the guests already there. We only scheduled the venue until 1 pm, resulting in limited opportunity to eat and mingle. By the time dessert was set out, it was time to leave. Had she let us know how late she was going to be, we could have delayed the arrival of our teams and tried to negotiate the room for additional time. Below is the breakdown of why we rated this so low:
- Late arrival with no contact, eliminating our opportunity to manage on our end
- Arriving with insufficient equipment for the event which could have been managed by a site visit
- Dirty dishes/dispensers/service wear - the first person to get hot water received a "bloom" of something left over from a previous event
- Did not provide several options of food/beverages listed on the contract but did include a meatball with hair in it
- Items were not labelled so individuals with allergies (specifically listed on the contract) were unable to eat
- Food was cold, insufficient with some not thoroughly cooked. It took so long for food to come out, many people left hungry and unhappy
Our event was early December. Due to weather and various issues that Rachel later described, I wanted to offer an opportunity to "make it right." While we can't supply a recommendation, we could have posted a neutral review with positive feedback for corrective action. Sadly, she continues to avoid resolution though we have offered easy solutions via 15 various voice/email.

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