Arguello Catering Company

One of my biggest regrets as I start the New Year is that its taken me so long to write this review.
Gail Howard is terrific
She catered my birthday party last year. She’s smart and funny and was able to help me readjust my menu several times to get the choices and the budget just right.
The presentation was great everyone loved the food, and I can’t imagine working with anyone else.
If you need catering big or small, formal or just fun I highly recommend you call Gail at Arguello catering

I was really torn on how many stars to give. As much as I would like to give 4 stars, this is really a 3.5 star review.
I had Arguello cater my wedding in Sept. 2015. I contacted various catering companies, and had a tasting at three. Of the three, Arguello’s pricing and food taste was the best. Gail was the person I worked with from the beginning. She’s awesome! Now if only she had been there on the day of. The entire day was a blur since it went by so fast, but there were a few things that went wrong. 1) they forgot 1 of the 3 vegetarian plates I requested so one of my guests went without eating (he also had a strict gluten diet so couldn’t even eat the sides or bread) 2) Gail stated that they always bring more than enough food. I ordered & paid for a certain amount of plates, and despite 9 people not showing up, they did not have anymore plates to give when 2 – 3 of my guests arrived after the dinner. Where were the «extras?» Where were those 9 people’s plate that didn’t show up? 3) During the dinner, carafes on the tables were empty and instead of being attended to, my guests had to ask for them to be filled. I paid for waiters/​waitresses per table, why weren’t those tables being attended to? 4) After we cut the cake, they took it to the kitchen and only passed out pieces for a certain period of time. Afterwards, my guests had to go to the kitchen and ask for a piece themselves.
Overall service was horrible! A seated dinner is a lot more than a buffet dinner, and if I’m paying the extra costs, I expect to have good service.
However, the food on the other hand, was delicious. It was great during the tasting and it was still great during the dinner (though I personally would’ve like the meat to have been cooked to medium well, it was more of a medium). They catered chicken marsala, tri tip, mashed potatoes and veggies. The appetizers were chicken and beef skewers, and bruschetta.
Now, would I use Arguello’s again? Yes, but not their service. I would never get a seated dinner again, but I would definitely get their buffet since their food and prices were good. I’m actually considering them for my baby shower in April!

Arguello just catered my wedding and although our guests were mostly pleased, there were a few glitches. For instance, our cream soda tasted like sparkling water (they eventually fixed it), they told me they would have canolis in place of eclairs for dessert and did not, and they did not put out cream with the coffee until it was already too late. The food (main course, coffee etc.) was not as warm as I would have liked. Also, the rolls served were not soft.
My primary stress was that they didn’t follow instructions for the room set up and my mother had to have them change it last minute to allow for dancing space. Overall, the event still functioned, so these glitches were by no means disasters, but I unfortunately cannot leave a flawless review.
Overall:
Pros: complimentary food tasting for bride and groom prior to selection, responsive servers when I expressed a problem
Cons: a few day-​of glitches, expensive

Rich helped cater my team lunch of about 25 people. what impressed me the most was his response time and how he worked with my budget.

Arguello Catering is an outstanding organization. I order food for various events at a hospital in South San Francisco. I heard they were booked solid through the holidays but called them anyway for an important event — and called just a couple of days beforehand.
They were able to fit us in and the service and food were outstanding. Also, the people who work for them did an outstanding job delivering and picking up. I can’t thank them enough.

Thank you so much for the fabulous food, presentation, and service! We have had the pleasure of enjoying your food in the past but this was the first event we had catered. All our guest (75+) raved about the food and couldn’t get enough. It was very well presented and had a lot of special extra touches.
Thank you so much Kevin and Gail for helping make our event even more special! Let’s do it again soon!

My review is long overdue! Arguello Catering is excellent. We have used them for various events at work even breakfast and have always brought the yummiest food! Not only is their office staff wonderful, their delivery staff is great. They don’t just drop the food off and go, they make sure it is set up nicely, everything is labeled and ready to go before they leave.
Did I mention they were able to do my breakfast catering at the last minute? I called a different catering company closer to my office on Friday afternoon to see if they would be able to accomodate us for Monday morning breakfast, including something else other than eggs and they told me no. Seriously, I’m ordering for 90 people and you can’t make me French Toast. So I called Arguello’s and told Mike what I wanted and he said «No Problem!» Aren’t they awesome or what?
So here it is Monday morning at 7:00 am and Arguello’s shows up as soon as I’m walking in the door to my office. That is a whole hour before they have to be here! I’m super excited because I will have time for breakfast today before my day gets hectic.
Thank you Arguello Catering!!! You are by far one of the best companies to work with! I will definatly be using them again.

We found Arguello on Unilocal and there were 4.5 stars, they are definitely top notch! The pasta we ordered was delicious, and the little sandwiches were very popular. They were on time, nice, set up a very nice looking buffet table, came with some extras, and picked up everything. We will definitely be using them again.

Arguello Catering is my go-​to backup for catering, only because the place I work at has its own catering. But if they’re booked, I ring up Arguello.
They’ve been great all parts of the catering process:
–Helping me plan menus
–Meeting diverse dietary needs
–Barbequeing for 100+ people
–Catering for small gatherings of 25 – 30
–Providing great food
–Always being on time or early
–Great customer service
–Reasonable, comparable prices
I highly recommend Arguello Catering.
P. S. They’re the only people who’ve ever made polenta taste so good in my experience. Props. The only thing I’m not a fan of is their beef satay– it just tastes like soy sauce-​y spicy beef, not the nice Thai satay flavor.

I recently used Arguello for a party I threw. I ordered a variety of items, all of which needed some customization or another. Arguello was great, was able to accomodate my customizations, and delievered to me on a Sunday. That was huge. Highly recommend.

About 2 weeks ago, I was tasked with putting together an office party for about 50 people. Knowing that catering to a party this size typically requires much notice, I crossed my fingers and contacted Arguello. Within minutes, Gail emailed me back, letting me know that the date I requested was available. PHEW! From that point on, planning the party was a breeze. Even when I would email Gail the day before, asking for more tables and heat lamps, she would promptly respond with a «Sure. No problem!». What a dream. The food was delicious (seriously, the BBQ chicken… TDF) and the staff was fantastic, very quick in and out. I’m looking forward to working with Gail and Arguello Catering again. I was a total thorn in Gail’s side, but she never let onto the pain. ;)

Arguello Catering has catered several office lunches for us over the past few months. My entire office is always so pleased with the food, it’s so delicious! We have ordered the ‘South of the Border’ (taco salads) a few times and it is everyone’s favorite. It comes with beef and chicken along with all the toppings. Drinks and desserts are always included. Today, we had the Chicken Marsala with roasted red potatoes and the Roast Pork Loin with apples and brown sugar. I’m not a huge fan of pork so I stuck with the chicken. The chicken was so tender and the sauce was incredible. It was served with cobbler, pecan bars and lemon bars for dessert. Yum! The service is equally as good as the food. The staff arrives promptly and sets everything up for us and they return a few hours later to clean everything up too. The food is always hot and fresh, never soggy or cold, which tends to be a problem when ordering take-​out. I highly recommend these guys!

good stuff!

We hired them to cater a company party we had. They were very nice to deal with and their food was also very good. We had to accommodate for vegans and gluten free colleagues and they were able to produce a beautiful spread which appealed to the masses as well as my vegan, veggie, and gluten free friends, too. I would use them again.

My husband and I never use any other catering company, as their food, personnel, and service are absolutely the best. This time was no different, however, due to pouring rain (not on anyone’s radar) we have an even better opinion of Arguello Catering. On the morning of the event, just as I was about to cry, Denise called and told me she had already put 2 tents in the truck. They showed up early, repositioned all of the tables and chairs (no easy task) and our party was a success. Carlos, Denise, Kim and the servers took over and we were able to enjoy our guests. They are an amazing group of people.
Bill and DJ Mitchell

i originally had a 5 star review up for Arguello, but it got deleted due to no text in the body of my review. basically, i reviewed it, forgot to type something in it, and it was just sitting here. so, here is my actual review for them!
this past summer, i interned with Music@Menlo, a chamber music institute. throughout a 3-​week long festival, we needed to provide lunch for all of the staff, students, and artists involved with the festival. before the festival, the event planning team found perspective caterers and through extensive communicating and testing out, we decided to go with Arguello.
On the first day of lunch, all of the staff was very, very happy with the job that Arguello had done. They had a bad experience with previous caterers, and Arguello’s food setup and display already won them over. Needless to say, throughout the entire three weeks, we had a very positive experience with Arguello. The food was on time, setup very nicely, taken away properly and in a clean manner, we got a great deal with them, and the staff were all very helpful and friendly. We only ran into an incident where we ran out of food once, but totally wasn’t Arguello’s fault — the lunch option that day was just too good, and everyone took way too much food.
We were all definitely very pleased with our finding of Arguello. We originally chose them because they were able to offer a lot of options, and a very enticing menu at a very competitive price. We ended up having a great experience with them, and let me just say that all of the food was delicious! I definitely felt spoiled getting to have Arguello catered food everyday for lunch over the summer.

We use Arguello’s for my work’s lunch program. Every day they are there early to set up and serve many employees a great lunch at a very reasonable price. Their staff is very friendly as well!

Carlos Calderon and the entire team of Arguello Catering far exceeded my expectations for creating a successful event at my wedding last Sunday.
The food was AMAZING! Tri tip and BBQ chicken cooked to perfection. Honestly, I can not tell you how many of my guests said this was the best wedding food they’ve ever had. I completely agree with them. I have absolutely no complaints whatsoever about the quality of the ingredients, taste or presentation of the meal. It was truly incredible.
But beyond the food, it was the service and professionalism that really made Arguello Catering stand out above a crowd of hungry catering companies. Times are tough and there are plenty of companies out there anxious to cut deals to win your business. And without a doubt, Arguello was incredibly competitive on that front. But the excellent value is not why I chose them. I chose them because they blew my socks off at my tasting with an ABUNDANT spread a delicious food and the most friendly and helpful point person, Carlos Calderon. He is truly a gem of a man. He won my trust and respect immediately and continued to impress me at each and every step of the way. From his incredible insights into event planning that I hadn’t even thought about to his friendly stories and smiling personality. Working with him was an absolute joy.
I am so pleased that for as long as I live in this area and Arguello is active in the Catering business… I never have to hunt for a caterer again. They are my people from here on out… no matter what the event. And without any doubt in my mind, you should use them too.

Been meaning to write this for a while now.
We used Arguello’s for a surprise birthday party. They were amazing. I think the very best part was not the mouth watering BBQ, nope it wasn’t that the meat was so tender it fell of the bone and was smothered in smoky rich BBQ sauce. It wasn’t the perfectly cooked chicken, just juicy enough, yet not underdone. It was none of those succulent things.
It was, in fact, the AMAZING service that Arguello’s provided. The staff that helped on-​site was phenomenal. They were so unbelievably friendly and useful — and always smiling! Find better, nicer service at such a good price. I dare you. You simply wont be able to. These guys were great. Five hard earned stars Arguello. And sorry it took me a month to give them to you!

I work at a non-​profit in Palo Alto and one of my co-​workers was able to get a deal with this company to cater food for different events, waiving delivery fees and small extras.
I don’t get catered food that often, but the owner (Rich) is very nice, willing to work with you on special orders (accommodated my request to have vegetarian sausages for a breakfast event) and the food we have had from here is always very tasty and fresh. It may not be the best food in the world, but no one has complained here!
The prices are more than reasonable for what you get, and I gotta give it up to someone that gives discounts to us small time community agencies in this huge land of high tech companies!