Caroline Cellars — Attraction in Niagara-on-the-Lake

I've been debating on writing this review for some time, but I decided after attending another wedding this past weekend and seeing the customer service the bride and groom received at their venue, that this review is well deserved, and needed to be shared. I recently had my wedding at Caroline Cellars in October, and I have to say that I am very disappointed with the experience. My husband and I originally met with Stephanie last year, and immediately developed a great rapport with her. We felt comfortable that she was going to give us the most incredible day. A few months after booking, the other wedding co-ordinator emailed me and told me that she would be taking over as Stephanie would be off for a while. This was fine, as we felt confident that either our information had been relayed to her, or she would at least perhaps set up a call or meeting with us to make sure she had all the correct details. Not only did Jaclyn never set up a meeting with us, but she would constantly forget details that I discussed directly with her, and email me several times regarding things that were already listed in my contract. I also found that a lot of the documents she would send over were always incorrect (menu's etc). I also felt like every time I asked her for a small favour (such as lighting the candles before the ceremony) she would constantly push back on me and tell me no, that she was too busy to do this. The wedding I went to this past weekend, the co-ordinator did EVERYTHING - she never had to beg for help and was never told no when she asked for assistance with something. I constantly got "I will be too busy doing other things" from Jaclyn - not sure why her title is wedding co-rdinator then, since she didn't assist me with co-ordinating anything. Another thing that really frustrated me, was that I asked Jaclyn a few months before the wedding about the rehearsal. If she would be there, if she was able to assist us and guide us when it came to the ceremony, or should I be paying extra for my officiant to come the day before. Jaclyn told me that she wouldn't be able to assist (once again) and that she wouldn't know how to guide us when it came to the ceremony. So I went and spend additional funds to have my officiant at the rehearsal with us, and sure enough, Jaclyn showed up, and spent the entire time saying she had no idea what was going on, this wasn't like a traditional wedding (we had our girls walk down alone, and the bridal party sat for the ceremony, this was it) and she just constantly complained that this "wasn't how things were normally done" - I'm angry that I spent extra money on the officiant, and Jaclyn ended up being there anyways. The Friday when I showed up to decorate, she didn't even introduce herself to me or my bridesmaids, she just walked up, asked if we were ready to go, and that was it. No intro, no congratulations. I hadn't even met her in person before, and that was my first in-person impression. On top of everything else, the day of my guests, bridal party and family found her to be very unprofessional. She seemed very visibly stressed, and didn't bother to hide it. She complained to my bridesmaids about how confusing the wedding was, and that my mother was causing her stress etc. On top of it, the absolute worst is that she cut our cake before we did. She asked if we wanted the cake to be cut and plated for guests - assuming she meant after the cake cutting ceremony, since she knew we were having it, it was listed in our timeline, then next thing I know, almost my entire cake is cut before we got to do the cake cutting. She blamed it on me saying she specifically asked me what I wanted, and that's what I had said, but like any normal person, I assumed she meant after we cut our cake, not before - she ruined a special tradition for us. To be honest, the venue is lovely, food is good, and the price is excellent - but take my advice, spend the extra money for better service. Still very disappointed about my...

I've been here before and had great experiences but yesterday was awful. We arrived for our lunch reservation for a group of 8, we asked if we had a tasting booked or not and we were told no,which is fine. We were seated for our meal and we all placed our orders, the food came fairly quickly but 1 persons meal was incorrect (the server punched in the wrong meal). We all began eating but the other meal took nearly 20 minutes to bring out, the meal or a drink wasn't comped or anything either. I went to the washroom and the bills came, everyone paid for theirs and my bill was on the table still. I took out cash and left it on the table on top of my bill and we left. A short while later I get a phone call saying I did not pay for my meal! I told them exactly which bills I left on the table and was told "we'll check our cameras" which was incredibly offensive. They called AGAIN to say we missed our tasting! We asked when we initially arrived if we had a tasting and was told no! Then they called AGAIN to confirm that I did pay but the server for some reason thought it was a tip. I will never be back here again, very disorganized, lack of customer service and they accuse their customers when they could have checked the cameras before even calling me.

update, it was an accusation as when I did exactly the bill demoninations left on the table the response was "we'll have to check the cameras". Usually I'd give the money to the server but she was not very present our entire time we were there, we were not offered any drink refills or even asked how our meal was. Just very...

To cafe management / owners,

I'm writing this email due to the experience my family and I had on Saturday July 13, 2024.

We ordered the seasonal salad, tahini cauliflower, and sirloin burger.

Firstly, the $10 cauliflower appetizer is extremely overpriced for the quantity of food it came in. The taste was also very bland, and diminished our experience during the meal.

More importantly, the seasonal salad gave my wife a VERY severe case of food poisoning that she started experiencing immediately after leaving the cafe, and she's still suffering from the poisoning today.

While we had a great experience at your cafe last year in our annual Niagara visit, the food poisoning this year did not help us relive the experience, and affected the experience of our overall trip. We're very disappointed to say the least.

We hope further measures will be taken to prevent similar cases of food poisoning in the future for other guests.

Update: We also don’t appreciate the defensive response we had received. This is meant to help your business because we have been a returning patron but instead we were asked to get the food poisoning checked out and report back on the exact strain of bacteria. We will not be...