Last night we attended Market Feast as part of the 2014 Adelaide Food & Wine Festival for $95 per person. According to the website this included all food (a decadent feast of Market produce, entertainment, coffee, cheese by Say Cheese, chocolate and strawberries from Providore a goodie bag and your first drinks (Hills Cider, MV Beer or wine) with drinks able to be purchased for $5 a glass after 9pm. We received one drink on arrival and after that were informed that all drinks must be paid for despite the website inferring that drinks were included in the package until 9pm. To then be told that the website is wrong & the event as a whole was making a loss is very hard to believe, firstly if you have made a mistake on a website you released which was selling tickets to the event you should rectify the issue as this is breach of contract with what people have paid for. How can an event charging $95 per person with one included drink & produce which is supposed to be promoting the market & therefor Im sure would have been provided at either little or no cost make a loss? As the majority of staff were apparently volunteers I again question how $38,000 in total for a evening makes a loss, especially with the quantity & quality? of what was provided. On the 28/4 I made contact via the website querying if there would be vegetarian options available for my wife, which I was advised there would be. However despite continuously asking your wait staff no vegetarian option as such was offered. She managed to get some salads but certainly not a meals worth & not worth the $95 paid. I completely understand that share plates are fashionable & all the rage at the moment but perhaps providing serving utensils would have been ideal, after we were crammed into the seating provided with our unknown neighbours virtually sitting on our lap they along with everyone else proceeded to serve food with the only utensils available - the wooden knife & fork they were also required to use to eat their meal. Certainly not a hygienic service of food & not to mention the extreme high risk of food contamination by the lack of serving utensils would Im sure breach food safety standards. Eating food off a tray with what I sincerely hope was a food safe piece of paper is certainly not what would be expected for $95 let alone eating out at all. When I overheard a conversation with the host he told the guests repeatedly that this is what fast food restaurants use. I have never ever seen a fast food restaurant that expects you to eat straight off the piece of paper on the tray, at least they provide the food in additional boxes or packaging. When the host was questioned about the lack of service for desert & the cheese he became extremely condescending towards the guests telling them that if they saw people with strawberries wouldnt common sense tell them to go find them & that it was also mentioned over the microphone. Most usage of the PA system was incoherent due to what I think was poor speaker placement, therefor any messages relayed over the system were not heard by the majority of guests. That aside myself and several others had gone to the Providore only to find the stall closed & no strawberries left. The mass of strawberries & chocolate that we did find much much further down the table on a plate was just that a fairly solid mass & certainly not easy to serve, they perhaps should have been served in individual paper cups. The cheese barrow looked great & was very theatrical however everyone crowding around trying to serve some cheese was not functional and as there werent enough crackers there was no way to take the cheese back to the people you were sitting with. There were far too many people crammed into the table which was extremely evident when you have guests finding a table from elsewhere in the market and moving it to where they were sitting so that they could at least attempt to eat off the tray without trying to balance it on their knees as they were not able to sit comfortably at the long table. Despite your host advising people that he had spoken to everyone and that there had been no complaints, he certainly did not speak to everyone. He also stated when queried on this fact that he spoke to people who represented everyone. Clearly from the comments on your pages since the event kicked off last night there are certainly some very unhappy people in Adelaide who felt as though they were overcharged and under delivered. I paid $95 for my meal last night where I managed to have a glass of cider on arrival with some canapés, salad, a small piece of kangaroo, 1/4 of a sausage & some pork which was all cold. The event was definitely not worth my $95 & most certainly not value for money for my vegetarian wife.
Posted on: Sun, 06 Apr 2014 06:16:17 +0000
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