Guest Blog: A Taste of Toast

*I'm pleased to present another guest blog by Laura! I didn't go through the whole caterer search, since I knew that I wanted to have my reception at a restaurant. However, because of my day job, I was pretty familiar with all the big caterers in town. It's great to see this smaller catering group provide brides with such a great, creative option!

After my fiancé and I chose our awesome venue, the next logical step was food. We started the search based on a list of “preferred caterers” our venue recommended. On the list was Toast Catering. Just hours after I’d emailed Toast my inquiry, I got a call back from Sam, the chef. He immediately made a great impression. He asked what our favorite restaurants were and if there were any special things to consider. There were. My fiancé and I are vegetarian, so we wanted an all veg menu. Also, our budget was on the modest side.

Just a couple days later, I received an email from Sam that contained the menu choices and our proposal. Everything looked good - AND was in our budget! Hooray! I decided on what our menu would be for our tasting and we scheduled a date.

The tasting was really cool. Sam and his wife, Kim, are the owners of Toast. They share a commercial kitchen in La Mesa and for events, like our tasting, they book the kitchen and use it to prepare food. They also bring an oven/stove to the event site on the day of and make food there so everything is fresh! Sam handles all of the cooking and Kim helps with the “front of house” activities like tables, etc.

After introductions and some preliminary questions about our wedding came the food. My fiancé and I loved it. The menu included vegetarian twists on typical meat dishes, like vegetable wellington:

And mini tomato burgers:

Plus falafel, stuffed peppers and more! It was amazingly wonderful. For each course, Sam and Kim explained what it was and left so we could eat and talk about the food. Both Sam and Kim were amazing. They were polite and not at all pushy.

After a totally opposite tasting with a second caterer the next day, my fiancé and I knew that we were sold on Toast. Sam and Kim are really nice and genuine people and the food was by far the best. Now we’ve signed on with them and are looking forward to moving onto the next step – linen colors.