Lake Elmo Inn Event Center Reviews

We LOVED Lake Elmo Catering!! All our guests told us the food was delicious. Our contact, Cheryl, was amazing and was the fastest communicator of any of our vendors. We set up a tasting, met the chef, even wanted to try some other items and came back for more. They cut our 4 tiered cake for us from a different venue. It's hard to know how to navigate a wedding, because most of the time, it'll be your first go around. Cheryl and the whole team at Lake Elmo Catering know their stuff, have great staff, and have a million different dinner/hors d'oeuvre/buffet/late night snack options.

Lake Elmo Inn catered our wedding and literally no one can stop talking about how amazing the food was. Cheryl, Lynda and team - the service was phenomenal from start to finish and to the kitchen - WOW!!! Thank you so much for making our perfect day even more perfect. We can’t wait to eat again at your restaurant!!

Excellent food and service! We had our grooms dinner and gift opening at Lake Elmo Inn Event Center and everything was amazing! The garden outside was beautiful, the food was delicious, menu adjustments were made so that we could have exactly what fit our group and they were so kind helping us setup making it as easy as possible for us. Cheryl was amazing to work with, patient, always available to answer questions and she kept us up to date on everything. The wait staff was so attentive and accommodated all of our requests. We highly recommend working with Lake Elmo Inn!

If you want exquisite food, fantastic service with a well informed, organized and friendly team, then this is your place! The compliments were endless for wedding in a tent with over 350 guests. They made each guest feel as though they were the only table of 8 in the place. Did I mention classy and professional? Nailed it!!

We had Lake Elmo Inn cater my daughter’s wedding and had an absolutely wonderful experience. The food was phenomenal! We had so many compliments on how it was the best food many of our guests have ever had at a wedding. The service was superb, from the taste testing with the head chef John to coordinating with Cheryl. They were both so helpful and professional to work with and went over and above anything we could’ve imagined. They helped make the wedding a wonderful experience. I would highly recommend the Lake Elmo Inn for your catering needs!

Lake Elmo Inn catered our wedding this November and we are so happy we chose them! The food was all delicious as expected, the service was exceptional, and our guests were so impressed with the presentation and quality of food. Cheryl was so easy to communicate with and made sure every detail was perfectly laid out before our wedding day. You can't go wrong with hiring Lake Elmo Inn for your next event!

We were confident from the beginning that the Lake Elmo Inn would be an excellent caterer for our wedding. Having grown up in Lake Elmo, I have many great memories of enjoying the food there. What surprised and impressed me was how kind and accommodating the Lake Elmo Inn was when our wedding plans changed due to a family emergency. We moved the date of our wedding, changed the location, changed the number of guests, and updated the format of the dinner service. Throughout everything, the Lake Elmo Inn was not only very professional and accommodating, they were compassionate and understanding, too. We had an absolutely beautiful wedding in my husband's mother's backyard, and the service--not to mention the exquisite food--was simply impeccable. I would recommend the Lake Elmo Inn to anyone looking for a caterer. They are professional, they are skilled, and most importantly, they are good people.

We had a great experience with Lake Elmo! We would recommend it to anyone. They were very responsive and wanted to make sure that our day went well!

Our wedding guests raved about the food that Lake Elmo Inn catered. We chose the Mediterranean lunch menu. The shrimp were the largest I've ever seen and the whole meal was delicious. Cheryl was great to work with and made everything easy for me. I highly recommend using Lake Elmo Inn!

John and his team at Lake Elmo Catering are truly the highest class of caterers. From our private tasting to the large selection of customized options we truly felt like we were in heaven. The food was served hot, and people at our wedding could not stop raving about great our food was. I highly recommend them for any bride looking for a fine dining experience. -Marisa

Awesome awesome awesome. Writing a legitimate review and posting on blog (and editing here) later.

Lake Elmo Inn is an absolute class act! From the moment we arrived at the Lake Elmo Inn with our parents for our tasting, we were blown away. We were greeted by the head chef and owner, John Schiltz, who also explained each of the dishes we requested and provided his thoughts and recommendations. After selecting our menu options, picking out linens, table cloths and stemware was a breeze. On the day of our wedding, the Lake Elmo Inn had the tables laid out exactly as we had wanted - everything was executed flawlessly! My husband has a huge sweet tooth so we decided to do the mini dessert display - definitely a huge hit. The biggest highlight was the number of guests who said how amazing the meal was after our wedding and still even today!

The food, appetizers and hall were wonderful. The staff was better then any we have ever seen.

Thank you
Steve

From the first time we met Cheryl at Lake Elmo Inn Event Center we knew we had found the place to have our wedding/reception. Throughout the whole planning process Cheryl was there every step of the way walking through any questions we had and assisting in any way that was needed.

On our wedding day we could not have asked for a better day. From the transition from the ceremony to the reception, to the food, to the staff staying on top of everything and going with the flow for the slight adjustments we had to make. We did our own decorating for the reception and the staff was amazing packing up everything for us so the only thing we had to do was pick it up the next day. That was a huge stress off us knowing we didn’t have to ask people to stay and help clean-up. They were also accommodating for our signature drink that we wanted at our wedding ordering in the special ingredients and making it taste like the original J

Lake Elmo Inn Event Center is a place we are so grateful we found for our wedding ceremony and reception. We are so thankful for everyone that worked our event and if you are looking for a place for your ceremony and/or reception stop and take a look at Lake Elmo Inn Event Center!

Lake Elmo Inn Catered our reception and did a flawless job! Our event was outside at a private residence, and LEI was incredibly conscious of every detail. Not only was the food out of this world, but the wait staff was so warm and welcoming to all of the guests. From serving the passed appetizers, to inviting guests to the buffet, each member of the LEI team was just a delight to have with us that night. Never were we waiting for the food, or nervous that something had fallen through the cracks. LEI catering is truly an expert in their field! We also had a blast working with the staff throughout the planning process. Each person we encountered was so warm, and willing to adjust to whatever our vision was for the night. I would highly recommend LEI to any bride and groom!

The most professional, flexible, easy-to-work-with caterers in the Twin Cities. Hands down best food around, but the service is what brings the Lake Elmo Inn to the top. They work with you the entire time and will pretty much create any combination of food you can dream up. They also work with ANY budget. I not only recommend them, I promise you will not be disappointed. We just loved having the Lake Elmo Inn at our wedding! (Plus they gave us a gift for wedding to come back and dine at their restaurant!)

Absolutely wonderful food! They were so professional and the food was so good. We got many compliments from our guests. They are extremely accomodating and professional. We were asked numerous times throughout the night if the food was to warm, good, etc. I would highly recommend them!

Lake Elmo catered our wedding. They were a big part of making our evening very special. The staff was great throughout the entire process. Cheryl our Event Coordinator made great menu suggestions and made sure we had everything we needed to provide our guest with a memorable evening and took a lot of the planning pressure of us. Thank you to Chef John for the very enjoyable tasting and delicious food selections. The great service continued throughout the evening of our event. Lorie and all the Lake Elmo staff were great. We had many comments about the staff and food from our guests.

Thank you for all your help in planning this special event. You were great to work with.

We are coordinating our wedding reception here, great folks to work with.

The Lake Elmo Inn made our wedding dinner memorable. We'd been to weddings where the only thing that strangers at a table can talk about is how awful the food is... we didn't want that to happen! Lake Elmo Inn food was great-- hot food was hot, cold food was cold.

The only hitch we ran into was that our guests sat down to dinner a little early, and they were not ready to serve yet. Many colorful toasts from guests saved the day. :)

I highly recommend the partially served dinner-- salad and dessert. It made our guests feel like they were being attended to, without our having to pay through the nose!

I had grown up absolutely loving Lake Elmo in all their food festivities and was so excited when I saw that they were a preferred vendor at the venue we had chosen. I had worked with their catering department for years through work and had strongly trusted their corporate catering! It seemed like the perfect fit for our wedding. Positive: our guests raved about their food! The duck and wild rice soup is still talked about. The food was fresh and hot when we got it. The service team was on time and set up the place settings nicely. Negatives: the on going communication as we planned our event was very poor. The catering coordinator asked us to fold our own napkins even though we lived out of state and wouldn’t get to town until 2 days before the wedding (I refused to do). Their up charges for service are through the roof (18% service fee, 20% venue fee posted to the client vs most caterers who take care of that themselves). What we originally discussed at our first meeting for a budget was out the window. There were a number of added costs per person for the meal (7$/person for plates and napkins) that were printed small in the very back of their 30 page catering guide (that as a overwhelmed bride planning a wedding from afar and starting a new job, was the last thing I could comb through). As the wedding approached, we were not given contact information for the service lead and had no way to make last minute contact. The night of the wedding, the service team had forgotten the mother of the bride’s gluten free meal, had forgotten to hand out the kids meals (which made the 20+ kids at the wedding very restless and a pain for their parents). While us as the bride and groom had a nice meal, we came to find out the service for our guests’ meal was not executed effectively. As dinner was completed the service lead told me that they had twice forgotten the hot water dispenser for our hot cocoa bar (winter wedding necessity and a big personal need!) and instead of going to get it again, they decided to disassemble the hot cocoa bar my mother had made for us without asking, but telling myself as the bride right before speeches. Letting go of these mishaps during the wedding, we were contacted over a month after the wedding to pay our invoice balance. After relating our concerns to the catering coordinator, they only acknowledged 1/2 of our questions and still wanted us to tip 18+% gratuity. They claimed that they had workers who stayed until after midnight to clean up even though our parents were the last ones there and we had not asked or wanted to pay labor for any outside help when our dinner ended by 8pm. They did give us a 350$ credit for the kids meals (a 3% value of our costs). I hope that the catering coordination and service improve so that couples can confidently provide the wonderful food Lake Elmo is capable of to their guests!