Elevated Eats by Chef Ju'von — Restaurant in Sanford

Food was delicious, service was abysmal, verging on non-existent. Arrived a few minutes after 10am to avoid any sort of crowd, but that strategy wound up being useless, as it still took 45 MINUTES to get my food— one piece of chicken and one waffle.

Server came by one time to get my order and give me water. Never came by to explain what the holdup was in the kitchen, and when my food did come, I had to ask for syrup because none was brought to me originally. No one ever came by to ask how my food was either. God only knows how long I would have waited for the check, but I took the initiative and went to the office and asked if I could pay there, which I could and did (maybe I should have been the one to receive the hidden 8% fee and my 20% tip).

Additionally, I was sat in a mostly outdoor seating area with a “roof” that was mostly composed of leaves, and when it started to drizzle I could feel little drops of water landing on me. Luckily it didn’t start raining for real or I would have needed to move. Oh, and I almost forgot, the table they sat me at was so rickety that I needed to keep my foot pressed strategically against one of the legs to keep it level/stable enough to eat without spilling my water everywhere.

Should give a lower rating, but the joy of Lord is my strength. 3 stars ✨

Edit (Reply to Owner): "PLEASE ALSO KEEP IN MIND IF YOU DIDNT K OW, ITS A SCRATCH KITCHEN WHICH MEANS IT WILL TAKE 15 TO 20 MINS TO FRY YIUR CHICKEN"

If it only took 15-20 minutes to get my food, I wouldn't be complaining. It took literally 2-3x that long. Did the chef decide to fry my chicken THREE TIMES lol? Frankly, I don't care how you try to justify it, it should not take 45 minutes to get a single plate of food ready to serve to a one-top who clearly is not there for a slow-paced dining experience.

"Btw two dishes on our menu we do not serve syrup with as suggested by our Chef because it's sweet and has other sauces on it such as the dish you ordered."

If this is even true, it's a complete mistake. Chicken and waffles should ALWAYS come with syrup, especially yours, because the waffle was on the dry side, and whatever that jizzy-lookin white glaze is that I got about half a teaspoons worth on my whole plate ain't gonna cut it. You literally have syrup in your kitchen, provide it with your chicken & waffles by default. Don't make guests ask for it.

Final edit w/ rescore: If you want to get all defensive and argue with a customer just for making a suggestion, that's on you (and you just lost a star because of it), but I have every right to make those suggestions. Oh, and here's another one, free of charge, you shouldn't argue with the people who provide you with valid constructive criticism and suggestions, it doesn't help and it doesn't make you look any better. The only thing that is your "right" is to not listen to my suggestions, in which case, you're more than welcome to keep disappointing and/or confusing your patrons regarding the lack of syrup provided with your chicken & waffles, since they/I have literally received syrup with every other plate of chicken & waffles we've ever ordered at every other restaurant that offers that dish, and trust me, it was very necessary. Have a blessed day and all the best with...

Poor customer service, late arrival and under cooked food are the highlights of my wife’s experience with Chef Juvon. There were some things that were good, but the aforementioned items overshadow the good. I’m making this post in hopes that Chef Juvon will provide a better overall service in the future than he did with my wife.

Poor Customer Service After my wife hired Chef Juvon to cater my birthday dinner, she began to talk about how the only method of communication was via text message. She also mentioned she was told she couldn’t get a receipt for her deposit because the software used by Chef Juvon didn’t provide it. After paying the deposit, there was never a time where the chef reached out to confirm details for the event. My wife had to repeatedly reach out to Chef Juvon to confirm the menu and setup times.

Late Arrival We were told that Chef Juvon would arrive at 4:30 pm to begin setup for an event scheduled for 6:00 pm. Chef Juvon arrived at 5:57 pm, three minutes before the event was scheduled to start. He didn’t proactively reach out to us to let us know he was running late. My wife called him and he mentioned he was a few minutes away.

Under Cooked Food When our guests began eating the surf & turf meal that was prepared, we all began to notice the lobster had a translucent look to it. We looked at the lobster further and determined it was undercooked. We advised our guests to not eat the lobster until we could cook it a bit further ourselves. We placed the lobster in the microwave to cook it further so that none of our guest would become sick from eating undercooked food.

After our event was over, my wife reached out to Chef Juvon to share her feedback about everything mentioned above. Chef Juvon, responded with what appeared to be a canned response:

“It is our goal to always serve with eggcelence! My apologies, the food wasn't 100% of what and or how we deliver. Thank you for your honesty, your feed back is greatly appreciated and will use it to build a stronger business. We will take your feed back and use it to improve on areas we lacked that day. If you should give us the opportunity to render another service with a 10% discount you'll find that we are of eggcelence. “

After the issues we had, we felt that offering a 10% discount for another service opportunity was kind of tone deaf. There was no phone call or any effort to make a bad situation right.

Chef Juvon, we recommend you take some time to focus on better customer service and being on time. We also strongly recommend that you double-check your food before delivering it to make sure it’s...

I was invited to catered birthday dinner by Chef Juvon, and to my surprise was very disappointed with the food. I say surprised, because I follow him on social media and see all the good food that he puts out at his in home catered dinners to which his guests rave about however; this experience was disappointing. The food looked delicious but when I sat down to eat, I quickly realize that my lobster was a bit undercooked. I did not want so say anything at first until the host asked if it seemed like the lobster was uncooked and to her surprise most of the lobsters were uncooked so we all had to zap it in the microwave to cook through. Fortunately, for Chef Ju’von the side dishes were good. Unfortunately though, the dessert was not great either. What was supposed to be banana foster looked more like mushroom gravy. My husband was brave enough to try it and realize that the flavors were good so we just poured it over the ice cream. I was however; very disappointed to know that when my friend brought the food being undercooked amongst the entire experience to Chef Ju’von that his response lacked much concern. This is just poor business management. Firstly, customer service should be a priority when running any business but especially a catering/food business. Word of mouth helps a business thrive or fail. Some things can be overlooked and you may think well my food speaks for itself but in this case it did not. My suggestion is if you can not be of eggcellence like your motto says then just say no. It is better to be honest upfront about what you can handle on any given day than to overbook yourself and put out subpar service and food. Also, educate the client about their request. You cannot do banana foster if you not there in person to flambay the bananas. Many growing businesses, need to learn quality over quantity. I’m sure my friend could have ordered food at any fine dining restaurant and paid a fraction of the cost. Luckily, we were all troopers and did not make a big deal about the dinner and just enjoyed each other company and still had...