La Caille in Salt Lake City – Wedding Planning Adventures
La Caille (a restaurant in SLC) is one of those restaurants you grow up somewhat aspiring to go to at some point because of the people and the words it’s associated with.
Not that celebrities have come here (that I know of?), but at least in high school I often heard the wealthier kids talk about La Caille as if it was the best thing since sliced bread.
Honestly, and I hope this doesn’t sound vain, that made me want to go there at some point. Not during high school because, frankly, the food I eat at home couldn’t be rivaled then (it still can’t), but perhaps while on a date or special celebration.
And then I grew up, became engaged, and started exploring local venues for our Reception.
From the get-go, believe it or not, and without having ever set foot anywhere near it, I knew that La Caille was OUT. After looking at pictures online, I just saw it wasn’t what I was looking for. So no, it’s not our venue.
(You’ll see why below.)
But my mom mentioned it a couple of times and made an appointment to go see it one Saturday. I didn’t know she had done this. In fact, she later told me she had made the appointment, and it was too late to back out, so I begrudgingly accepted. Of course, that meant Fiancé would also come :).
Before the appointment, however, I had done my research and looked at photos, and wasn’t all that impressed.
For this post, I looked online at some of those same photos and I’ll be sharing them with you below, along with some additional commentary to explain my point of view and why we’ll probably never have even one meal at this place.
Reasons for why we didn’t like La Caille and why we wouldn’t recommend it
Above is perhaps the most popular shot of the restaurant, and with good reason. It makes it look beautiful. Ignore the dirty walls on the right and the corrugated plastic/metal coverings on top of the hanging flower pots, however. (We didn’t.)
For starters, this place is easy to drive past and miss, which happened to my mom the day of our appointment. Fiancé and I drove separately from her and we almost missed it, until we noticed the gates signaling what we hoped would lead to the famous restaurant:
These dang gates, that freaking narrow entryway, and those what-in-the-world things on the ground: Pray that your car fits and that you don’t freak out over potentially hitting something.
Up next: the uneven and dirty floors EVERYWHERE…
As we were walking on the hallway above, the lady kept talking to us about how the place was a labor of love that a man built for his wife, and how we’d notice different random, almost misplaced-looking things here and there.
But the funny thing about those floors is that they’re a HAZARD to one’s balance! The least the guy could’ve done is lay them on straight.
But enough about the uneven floors. Now is time for the dirty and un-taken-care-of floors!
Ironically, those three pictures were among the first I came across in my research. Another ironic thing is that they’re found among someone’s actual wedding photos that the restaurant keeps on its website.
Yes, these photos of dirty and stained floors and pots were actually taken on someone’s wedding day. If that’s what it looks like for such an occasion, imagine what it’d look like any other time.
(Not differently.)
I mentioned these photos of the floors to my mom who then relayed my concern to the lady who’d be showing us around the venue. The lady said that I had nothing to worry about!
But alas, during our stroll through this spot, the floors were both stained like this and with little pockets of dust, as if someone was in the process of sweeping them…and didn’t bother finishing before a showing.
Moving on…
The room in the photo above cracked us up because the windows were dirrrty. That’s all.
And these last two photos make me wonder, “WHO would want to marry in a greenhouse?!” (Apparently lots of people do.)
Another thing we didn’t appreciate about this venue is its insistence on valet parking. Nevermind that once when my mom and I went to Vegas for a conference I was presenting some research at, the valet staff at a hotel emptied our full gas tank. (We did get the money back after a rather unnecessary struggle with–and lots of evidence for–the hotel.)
Valet employees generally have such little disregard for one’s vehicle, that I wasn’t a fan of the idea of having to pay a bunch of them for something that people should do themselves for free.
Despite the numerous CONS, not everything about La Caille sucked when we saw it, however.
For starters, there’s a room on the top floor that was quite darling. And because I believe there was snow when we went, we couldn’t tour the grounds, which (at least in pictures) look pretty. There’s also a cool castle-like tower to get to the second floor, and I for some reason like those kinds of features in buildings and homes.
But this place left us 99% underwhelmed.
Tell me: Have you been to La Caille? What did you think?
Disclaimers: 1) Unless otherwise noted, none of the places, products, or services I discuss in my Wedding Planning Adventures series are sponsored or even thought about by anyone other than me. 2) I don’t believe in negative reviews. However, the main goal of this series is to show that women have very discerning tastes and that regardless of budget, we should expect perfection from our providers on our big day. Too often, venues think they have the upper hand and that they’re the best thing to happen to society. Not so. If I have a negative experience or see/notice/smell something unsavory somewhere, you deserve to know. I know there are women like me out there, and these posts are for you.
