Forgotten order, raw chicken, melted plastic for Christmas dinner.
I held off posting until now because I was repeated assured that Terza would "make things right" for this horrible experience, as they promised early on. Now almost 2 months later, I know this was not the case.
As background, our family has ordered from Terza for our Christmas dinner the past several years. We have always had good service, good communication, and good food that was easy and straightforward to prepare. I share this, because I know how the food is supposed to arrive ready to heat.
This year, several weeks before Christmas I placed a catering order that included our usual chicken parmesan, lasagna and side orders to be delivered on Dec 23. I had e-mail and phone conversations and confirmations for a delivery.
The first big issue was that they FORGOT ME. On December 23, more than an hour after the delivery time I called the restaurant to be told that maybe I was supposed to pick it up. I pointed out the order confirmation that it was a delivery. They then acknowledged they had forgotten to deliver my order and they needed to call the person in who was responsible back to the restaurant. I received my order later that evening. The usual Reheating instructions were included. THERE WAS NOTHING THAT INDICATED I WOULD BE COOKING RAW CHICKEN on Christmas Day. As such, I refrigerated the food upon delivery.
On December 25/Christmas Day, I was entertaining out of town family - including small children. But when I opened up the chicken to prepare it for reheating, I found that it was breaded and RAW (see video). This required me to stand in the kitchen and deep fat fry dozens of chicken breasts (video). What was the point of having this catered!!?? Frying chicken that should have been precooked was time spent over a stove, rather than entertaining and being with family. It smelled up my house and required additional clean up.
I thought that was the only issue! I followed the instructions to Reheat the lasagna and then started smelling plastic. I pulled out the lasagna to find that under the foil lid there was a layer of plastic wrap. This was melting into the lasagna. (photo). I then quickly checked the other items being reheated, and those too had melting plastic wrap underneath. Again, I had not even thought to check since the instructions were just "put them in the oven with the lid on". There has never been plastic wrap on these items in other years.
Finally, there was NO parmesan cheese included with the order of chicken PARMESAN.
I was so angry at the service and the inconvenience and how I had to spend Christmas morning. I called the restaurant December 26. I talked with one of the managers about my experience. She acted horrified and apologized. She asked how much my catering bill was and I told her. I also noted that I had included a 20% gratuity ( $60-which is just hilarious when you consider the "service" I received) She told me she would be sending out a gift card in the next couple of days and was really sorry. I honestly assumed it would be for the full amount we spent ($400). I thought that was a genuine gesture of good will and that they wanted to ensure my continue business (personal dining, business events, and catering).
Flash forward 3+ weeks and we still had not received anything in the mail. I reached back out to the same manager. She assured me that she had mailed a gift card shortly after we spoke. I noted that we had not received it and also she confirmed it had not been used and so she said she would issue another one.
More than 2 weeks later, I still had not received the gift card and reached out again. A few days later, I got a $100 gift card on a $400 bill. I was even angrier at being strung along for weeks. I called the same manager. This time she really was not apologetic. She told me that her boss would call me. He has not. read more