The Main Ingredient

Everyone we dealt with at Main Ingredient was professional, friendly, and accomodating. The best part was having an on-site coordinator (the lead server), who made sure that everything was just as I wanted it. I felt comfortable enough after meeting with them that I didn't even see the room before I was walking down the aisle. Shout-out to Rachel and Aileen!

One of the best things that I could have done during the year and a half worth of planning was have the Main Ingredient cater for us! They were one of the most professional companies that I have worked with!!! I loved that they were a "one-stop-shop" because they provided my cake, all the rentals, a coordinator and, of course, amazing food!!! The person that I worked closely with was Rachel, and you can't find anyone as sweet and as professional as she is!!!! She was there EVERY step of the way, always willing to help and calm down a crazy, OCD bride!!On the day of, EVERYTHING went according to plan, and all I can say is that it was due to the Main Ingredient! The staff was absolutely wonderful and was very helpful to all of our guests! The food was out of this world, and thanks to Rachel, my husband and I were able to eat!!! She was VERY attentive to us and always made sure we had something to eat or drink! She kept us on time and all I had to do was say "I need Rachel" and she was there! I would recommend Main Ingredient to all brides AND plan to use them in the future!!!

The BEST CRABCAKE EVER! The best decision we have ever made is to have The Main ingredient cater our wedding. Rachel, our consultant is the greatest. She gets back to you in just minutes after you email her. She is so accommodating to our requests. She worked with us every step and would even recommend how to save money on certain aspects of the wedding.The food was phenomenal. We had crabcakes, shrimp and chicken bites for the cocktail hour and tenderloin with the tarragon bearnaise sauce(mucho delicioso) and grilled chicken for dinner with salad and grilled veggies that were to die for. Our guests couldnt be more happier with the food. They are still talking about it . We had the cake from them too. We had 3 flavors and were great hit to everybody.The service at the wedding was impeccable. They were simply great. They made sure the guests and us the bride and groom are taken cared of.Like I said, one of the best decision we have ever made for the wedding. Never had any stress in dealing with The Main Ingredient and would definitely use their services in the future.

We were excited to work with Main Ingredient because we have enjoyed the restaurant and found, upon further research, that they had catering menus with a lot more personality than you might expect from a company serving large events. Our guests seemed happy with the combination of classic (grilled veggies and chicken, simple salads) and truly unqiue (crab chimichangas!!!) items we selected. We enjoyed working with Rachel Cloud, head server Patti Underwood and the entire crew!

Main Ingredient was AWESOME to work with! Rachel was my sales consultant and was with me every step of the way; she was very supportive to me (affirming many of the things I wanted), as a bride, and advised and made suggestions based off of what I wanted. She also knew we were on a budget and helped us save money in different ways. She was totally responsive to all of my e-mails and many questions.The food and service was great at the wedding! We also had their cupcakes, which were excellent. The only thing that I wish we more clearly outlined was where things were to go on wedding day; some of the catering team on the day of the wedding didn't seem to know what went where/what was going on with the various components of the wedding, which kind of had me frazzled last minute. This is probably due to lack of communication, but not any fault of Main Ingredients; I just wish we had outlined it more clearly when we met.

I was very pleased with my wedding cake. More so than I expected because at the tasting I was given a sample of cupcakes in different flavors and many of them seemed a little dry. The wedding cake was moist and delicious. I had a four tiered square shaped cake and the price was much lower than the competitors in the area with big names. The cake was also beautiful. I gave them a swatch of the wedding colors and a picture from a wedding magazine with two different designs I wanted added to each tier. I am still eating the sheet carrot cake and wish I had more of the lemon cake with the lemon curd that was in the tiers.

We enjoyed working with Main Ingredient to put together our wedding and we were impressed with the food and their problem solving skills during our tasting.But while our catering contact seemed to have it together in preparation for the wedding, the team that was there on our wedding day didn't seem to know what the plan was or how to follow it. The caterers broke several of the venue's rules (even though they had worked at our venue before!) and the event manager was a sour party pooper all night long. The staff was polite, but they didn't work well with our other vendors who tried their best to follow the schedule we had prepared for the event. We were disappointed that the marketing and the recommendations we received from others were not the reality on our wedding night.

The guests of my parent's anniversary celebration enjoyed the food. For dinner we had 3 appetizers, 3 proteins, garden salad, haricot verts, daughinoise potatoes, and a cake served. Of the appetizers, the cheese and fruit platter and the crab dip were excellent! For the proteins, we had herb crusted salmon, grilled ginger marinated flank steak with teriyaki sauce, and lemon chicken breast with tarragon. Overall, the food was quite tasty. I received a lot of nice praise about the food from our guests. The only complaints I heard from my guests were about the lemon chicken breast with tarragon and the dauphinoise potatoes, both of which were too dry. The dessert was excellent and decorated beautifully! We had a yellow sponge cake with pastry cream and fresh strawberries inside and on top of the cake with butter cream frosting. Overall, the best food items were the yummy crab dip, variety of the cheese selection, herb crusted salmon, grilled marinated ginger flank steak, and the dessert. The service was very friendly, courteous, and efficient. The servers went out of their way to be helpful with final decorations and making the place look nice for our guests. The servers were attentive to our needs and pleasant to work with. They eliminated the stress for us and they made the event pleasurable for all our guests. I think they are a very good and experienced caterer.

I would recommend Main Ingredient to any soon-to-be-brides! They were unbelievably understanding and helpful. They assured us of a fantastic wedding and that is exactly what we got. The staff put our minds at ease and really delivered. The food was excellent and the service was great. The head-of-staff made sure to check-in with my husband and I throughout the night to see if we needed anything or simply to ask how my night was going. I couldn't believe how kind they were. Our event planner constantly sent us emails checking-in with us, asking how the plans were going, what else she could do to see-through our wedding plans. Like I said unbelievable service!! Wouldn't have done anything differently!

The Main Ingredient catered our wedding in May and it was excellent! The food was fantastic - the steak was well cooked as was the chicken. Both had great flavor and were moist. The sides that were served were also great. Many people commented on the quality of the food.But what made the event was the service from the folks at Main Ingredient. Everybody from the office staff and Rachel (who was our contact person) making sure the planning process was smooth down to the servers and bartenders. They were extremely helpful and worked with us to make sure everything was perfect.I would definitely recommend The Main Ingredient for your next event.

The Main Ingredient is a Very good catering service to use for every party! They are very professional, easy to get a hold of, the food is GREAT and my wedding cake was so beautiful. My sister used them to cater her entire wedding and the food was fabulous! It is a little on the expensive side but worth every penny.

Jenny from Main Ingredient was amazing! She was very patient with us through bouts of indecision and had great ideas that we would never have thought of ourselves. The food was great and the desserts were a huge hit. We particularly loved the Thai Chicken Salad, and Marzipan Strawberry hourderves. They also were able to recreate a favorite dish of mine that I had years before. Also, when we had a crisis with the flowers for our centerpieces, Jenny was there to save the day with the perfect solution.

Main Ingredient catered our wedding in October in Annapolis. They were wonderful. I had requested quotes from two other caterers and found that Main Ingredient was the most responsive, easy to work with and competitive in pricing. Rachel was amazing. She listened to what we wanted, took notes at our tasting, was very open to our feedback. On our wedding day, our guest kept telling us how great the food was. I would them again and recommend them for your wedding.

We could not have been more pleased with our cake. It exceeded our expectations in every way. I wish we could attach a picture. We showed Rachel the cake we wanted and they produced and even more beautiful version. Everyone was talking about how good it tasted as well...one of our many highlights.

Main Ingredient did a FABULOUS job with our wedding. The food was great and so was the service. Our guests really enjoyed everything, especially the mashed potato bar. We really appreciated their willingness to work within our budget. Rachel (our catering sales consulatant) was absolutely amazing, she was there to help us with every detail. She provided many suggestions on how to make the day extra special. I would highly recommend Rachel and Main Ingredient to cater any event, I would definitely use them again!!

My husband and I chose The Main Ingredient to cater our wedding and we couldn't have been happier with our choice! The food, the service and overall experience working with The Main Ingredient was absolutely wonderful. Our catering sales consultant was Rachel. From the initial meeting with Rachel up until the very end, she was so responsive and always available to answer any questions or make quick changes to the menu, schedule of events, etc. We hired Rachel as our wedding coordinator also, which was the best money spent. Our wedding was the only one that I've been to that started exactly on time! She promised it would-and it did because of her. Our wedding went smoothly, nothing went wrong and I wasn't worried about anything happening, because Rachel had everything under control-it just felt reassuring knowing that we had her there to depend on to keep the wedding running smoothly! The food is to die for, especially the cake! I'm so happy we had Main Ingredient do our cake, everyone loved it! My husband and I will definitely dine at The Main Ingredient restaurant whenever we are in town. I 100% recommend The Main Ingredient to any bride or person planning an event. Just schedule a tasting and see for yourself! - Ask for Rachel!!

The Main Ingredient did a great job of catering our wedding aboard the Catherine Marie. They are very professional, the service was great and the food was good, the hors d'oeuvres even better! They made our wedding cake and it was awesome, we did not have a traditional wedding cake, rather a replica of the family castle in France and they did an awesome job with that, might I add, the cake was delicious! the flavors and fillings are sublime. Try the chocolate cabernet with the rasberry mouse filling, you can't go wrong! The mains were good, not amazing though, for the price, I would expect better. We chose the seafood wrapped in filo and it still came out soggy, not crunchy as filo should. So that was dissapointing, I'm sure most guests ate all the lovely seafood inside the filo though. The table settings looked gorgeous. The staff was excellent.

Rachel at The Main Ingredient really took care of me. I was planning my wedding from 4 states away and had verbally committed to another cake vendor before signing a contract. When I finally tasted that cake I was unimpressed and was suddenly without dessert for my wedding that was 1 month away. I contacted The Main Ingredient--I used to work for their catering side in college--and I knew that I would be taken care of. I was having trouble scheduling a tasting and Rachel left me a huge tasting of cupcakes, fillings and frostings for me to pick up and taste at home. We signed a contract via email the week before my wedding and I never worried for a second about everything getting done perfectly.The cake was beautiful, my guests raved about the flavors and I can't wait to taste the leftovers. Thank you to Rachel and the Main Ingredient for saving this procrastinating bride!

Both my husband and I do not like cake, so when we tried the amazing butter pound cake with buttercream frosting and absolutely loved it, we knew we found our cake baker. Main Ingredient not only had incredibly delicious cake, but really beautiful designs. We met with Main Ingredient staff a few times, and they even had us meet with our baker who sketched out a design of our cake, which helped us refine our vision.We wanted a very simple, elegant cake and that is what they delivered. Our cake turned out exactly as we envisioned and planned with Main Ingredient. It was amazing, and our guests also said that it was the best cake they have ever tasted. In addition, some of our guests thought it was fondant until they tried it because it was so well frosted. We cannot wait to try it again for our 1 year anniversary!We were highly impressed with Main Ingredient's customer service and their cake design and taste. It was a perfect cake for our wedding day!

We used The Main Ingredient as our caterer for our reception in May of 2010. We had our event at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. I could literally gush about this company and the job they did for pages and pages!We worked with Jenny Francis and this is who I would recommend to work with. On our day of the reception, Kailey was my personal planner and literally my "brain" for the day. I had the challenge of planning my reception that was going to happen in another state. I live in VA and we were having our event in MD. Trust me, this REALLY could have turned into a nightmare and it was as smooth as if they were down the street from me.I think one of the biggest challenges a bride has is trying to communicate the vision she has in her head to the folks who are going to be providing the services. It was as if Jenny was in my head because she just got it. She even added a few ideas and problem solved in areas that I didn't even initially think about. The fact that they knew the venue so well made it that much easier. The menu we chose was really creative and unique. The food looked beautiful in the way it was arranged and it was hands down the most fabulous tasting menu! Seriously, when do you get a bride that says, I am going back for seconds and to hell with the schedule. We were late on our first dance because we were enjoying our meal so much! It's been 2 weeks and we are STILL getting rave reviews on our food and menu choices!As for the wait staff and bartenders...they were AMAZING! My husband is in the military and these aren't always the easiest boys to serve and this bartender handled them so well that they even made comments to us about how great she was. (I believe her name was Linda) Samantha, the lead server was great as well. We never wanted for a drink or food at any time throughout the evening.I would be remiss if I didn't devote a paragraph to our planner that day, Kailey. All I can tell you is this. From the minute we left our last minute details meeting on Thursday with Kailey, my brain went into relax mode. I realized after the fact that I never worried about a thing that day. I was so relaxed and so able to focus on my husband, our families and our celebration and I NEVER would have been able to do that if Kailey hadn't been absolutely spectacular in her role. She is the most calm, collected person and yet was able to handle any curve ball that came her way -- what I appreciated most was that she never let me know if there was an issue, and we had a little issue with our band. She gave me the ability to truly enjoy my day to the fullest degree.I just can't say enough about our experience with this company. They truly made our day and celebration that we and our guests will never forget.HAPPY PLANNING!Darcy Thompson