Gourmet Five Year Old Party - Another Disappointment

Gourmet Five Year Old Party
At $60 per person, I was hoping that this party, by drinkeatplay would be off the hook. They changed the venue on us last minute so we were thinking - either they had too many people and they needed a bigger space or they didn't get enough people so they had to get a smaller place.
Either way, the event was help at Boulevard 3 - which was a cool little joint. As we walked in, I was impressed by the cabana areas, the fireplace, and the general ambience they had created.

They even had these old school games on the tables for people to play.

Biggest disappointment? The FOOD. If you are going to be a gourmet food event - bust out the good food!

Here's what had they promised:
The event will celebrate the best of comfort food as LA's best caterers and restaurants will appeal to your childhood sensibilities and gourmet palate. Think mac n' cheese with lobster, ravioli with pumpkin, sloppy joes made from kobe beef. It'll be your standard five year old birthday: really good food, lots of sweets, and plenty of juice (in our case, wine). So try to keep your fingers out of the birthday cake and stop asking us "why".

No sloppy joes made with kobe beef, didn't see any ravioli and no birthday cake. A lot of tables had closed up early so there were probably only 10 or food choices. Huge disappointment. In fact, we heard one girl say at the photo booth (which was free), that at least her $50 got her some pictures (she paid $10 less bc she was on a list).

A few things saved this event.
1. We got to take wacky pics with the Nestle Quick bunny. Kara and Grace.

me making out with the bunny (kids, close your eyes).

2. they gave out these cozmodeck cards, worth $35 for free. (They are basically restaurant gift cards. $15 bucks off at select LA restaurants.)

Will I go to another drinkeatplay event? Probably not. Another disappointment this weekend. Ay yay yay!

Tags: drinkeatplay, event, gourmet

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Comment by alice on June 23, 2008 at 11:59am: yeah..i don't think we'll be going to Dessert Decadence...

Comment by Kara on June 23, 2008 at 11:56am: (totally lagged on this post...) this shoulda gone before: the saga continues...

Comment by Kara on June 23, 2008 at 11:46am: I'm looking forward to trying out the Dessert Decadence event.
I enjoyed hanging out with you and Alice! Hope we can do it again soon!!!

Comment by alice on June 23, 2008 at 11:21am: And the saga continues...

On Mon, Jun 23, 2008 at 10:46 AM, Dan Silberstein wrote:
I don't see how writing a negative post is somehow redeeming to us. We're giving you three free tickets to compensate for you experience and would appreciate it you deleted the post.

To which I replied:

On Mon, Jun 23, 2008 at 11:00 AM, Alice Yoo wrote:
Hello Dan,

I'm Alice, Founder and CEO of My Modern Met. My sister, Grace, wrote to you because she was compelled to give you an honest assessment of our experience there. My Modern Met was found on the principal that we would give our members true, real life experiences. It was very kind of you to offer us three free tickets to your next event, but I am sorry to say that this does not make up for our lost time and energy spent going to yesterday's event. You created a great environment, I will give you that, but charging $60 for an event that couldn't live up to its promises was extremely disappointing.

You do not have to send us three free tickets, just to let you know, we will not be taking down the post.
We will think about going to your next event, at our own volition.

Thank you.
Alice

Apparently, we are not alone - fellow yelper review

Comment by alice on June 23, 2008 at 10:00am: so grace wrote this scathing email to drink:eat:play...

Dan,

I wanted to write you to tell you what a let down and disappointment yesterday's event was. I am a mother of a 15 month old daughter, and I arranged babysitting and planned way in advance to attend this event (1 hour away) in the heat. I paid for my sister and friend to also attend. Our friend had flown in from Boston yesterday and we raced down to Hollywood in anticipation of kobe sloppy joes, etc. Instead, we got there and there three different tables with mac and cheese, and no kobe sloppy joes and the tables were sparse and poorly attended to. I cannot overly empasize what a pure disappointment this was for all three of us, and I hope that your sponsor can do the right thing and reimburse us for our time, money and disappointment. Needless to say, with this bitter taste in our mouths, we will not be attending any future events and will express to all of our friends what a waste of time this was.

Regards,
Grace Linker

and the good thing that came out of it was a sincere apology.

Grace,

Sorry to hear about your experience. We had three restaurants that told us last minute they couldn't send staff so we had to get volunteers to pick up the food and serve it. Along with that, those restaurants didn't provide the food they had told us they would. As compensation, I can give you three free tickets to our upcoming events, Dessert Decadence (July 27th at Boulevard 3) or Around the World in 80 Sips (which is actually taking place in Playa Vista on Aug 28th).

Dan Silberstein
Drink:Eat:Play

Guess we will be going to another event.