Sphinx Banquet & Catering Center — Attraction in Roselle

HONEST NEGATIVE REVIEW I have coordinated a lot of events. I have an several of my own private events. I have never been to an establishment so poorly run in my life. Let's start with the initial process. 1st, the owner interacts with and is deceptively polite and says she's able to carry out all your wishes and concerns. The venue I was coordinating was a Sweet 16.

Lie: The Linen

The party colors were black and gold and we'd like black linen. The owner said I have all the color linen you'll need. After the deposit was made (and a few other small deposits) she said she didn't have any black linen or table cloths and we'd need to get our own. At a full service establishment, you should not have to pay or use an outside source for basic linen unless you're looking for something custom. I would recommend that, the day of (before signing anything), asking to see all linen choices. At "normal" establishments, you are given a swatch book of available colors to choose from. At this place, you are pointed in the direction of an old beat up hutch cabinet of drawers overflowing with stained, dirty and wrinkled napkins. There is a random storage closet filled with filthy linen on the floors. You'll see a lot of them hanging out of plastic bags thrown about and thrown on dishware on top of counters (that people are supposed to eat from). There no organization in their process whatsoever. My client used an outside source to find black tablecloths and chair covers. A few days before the event, the owner called and said she orchard new black chair covers. My client was pleased by her efforts and canceled her chair cover order to save money. However, the night before the event, we arrived to pre set up and found that the owner had only ordered 100 chair covers (for a party of 120). We were left short. So we had to improvise (because we had no other potion at this point) to use mismatched chair covets that she had. I would think that the basics would be for a venue to have enough linen for all the seats.

Lie: The contract

Please do your due diligence at the place before signing the contract (if you decide to disregard my advice which is to stay clear of this venue).

The owner sat down with my clients and stated that she would be able to host their event for a flat rate for up to 120 people. This price was to include everything: Linen, tableware, food and drinks. The owner asked my client about their menu requests and stated agreed to include those items. Naively (and certainly without my knowledge), my client signed the front page of the contract which didn't include much detail.

If you book at this venue (I highly recommend you don't) please make sure that the front and back of this contract is completely filled in. On the back side of the contract (which was never discussed in detail) there is a "menu section" which is not even listed as such. It is simply 6 line items at the top of the page. If you were not aware of this section, you wouldn't know that this is where you should literally write it all your food choices. The owner uses this (when it's convenient) to write in the agreed menu items. However, in our case, my client never knew that she needed to fill this section in and it was left blank. She signed the contract. On the day of the event, the serice staff set out pitchers of water and soda on the tables. The trays were all lined out at the buffet area. As the party went on, we noticed that no food had been served yet. My client asked the owner when it would be served. The owner saiD that this ad a "bring your own food" event. WHAT?!?!? They had no intentions of cooking or serving anything. At this point, there was an 2 1/2 hours left of the party of 120 people and no food. The owner was loud and rude and stated that my client signed a contract. She then showed my client the contract and on the back side (above those empty line items she had written "bring your own food". She wrote this in after my client signed the contract and she was not in her presence. How conniving...

On first glance this place was nice, but OMG.. this place was absolutely hideous. The chair covers that we were promised were all dingy, dirty, tan, small holes and rips on them.. NOT ONE chair cover with my entire 120 place seating's were clean. The table clothes ALL had stains on them. The food was served in a buffet style setting while in foil pans, my guests ate off of paper plates and paper wear after we complained that was when real plates and silver wear were brought out to us... and when it came time to cut the cake my guests were given plastic forks and paper plates as well.. We were given an 11am set up time (event was at 3pm) & when we came there the place was not cleaned from the previous party the night before. I went to the back to the owner Nancy to advise her of the uncleanliness of the place and she was in the back prepping the food with no gloves and I am almost certain using the food from the previous night party for my event. I had tons of out of town guests coming in and I could not cancel the party because that was my first instinct. I decided to go on with the celebration thinking no one would notice the small details but during the party guests began to comment on how dirty the place was as well as smelling like mold and mildew and how the table cloths were dirty upon arrival as well as the bathrooms were not cleaned and properly stocked with toilet tissues. Not to mention guest also stated that for a party of 120 (which we had) there was only one person who set up, cleaned, assisted with our questions and she did not speak English. when we asked for another person who could understand there was 3 lady's in the back all without gloves prepping food and they didn't speak English as well. The owner peeked her head out and he had on a long night gown type of shirt.. I don't think it was professional at all... The final straw was that when we had to cut the cake ourselves (which we were told that we wouldn't have to) I asked for gloves to properly serve the cake and there was not one box of gloves in the entire place. for 10 mins they searched for gloves (3 different staff members) and finally someone went to the corner store to purchase gloves. As a restaurant and caterer I know for a fact that gloves should be worn during the preparation of food. I was disgusted with the way this place was ran, decorated and looked. I will be calling the health department on them as well as verifying someone in that facility is Serv/Safe certified.. This is why people get food poisoning and other food...

If there was less than 1 star that is what they would be getting from me. My cousin and I were organizing a party for my aunt.we asked her if she had the Saturday available and she said no so we booked her for a Sunday.A week prior to the event we went over to make sure that everything was okay.That is when she told us if we could have the event on Saturday instead since she had a death in the family and had to travel outside of the country early that Sunday. FYI all the invitations have been sent out already for Sunday . So we decided to get our deposit back from her and find another place. It was a nightmare . On such short notice all the places have been booked. Then I decided to pretend I was somebody else and called her to ask if she had Sunday available. She quickly responded yes.the Sunday of my party I called to make sure she was outside of the country and guess what she was not. So she lied to us and had us looking for another place one week prior to our event.They are just horrible people to deal with.Do not I repeat Do not do business with them.Take...