Most catered events like weddings serve food that is of at-best average quality. That's especially true if the food is brought in to the hall, the kitchens for hotel events tend to be slightly higher quality, but generally still not great. Part of it is that producing large numbers of meals served at the same time requires some compromises in the kitchen.

But there are exceptions. Years ago my wife went to a national conference for her sorority, at a hotel in Minneapolis. She said the meals were so good that when the chef came out at the last event, he got a standing ovation.

I've only been to one catered event that had a truly outstanding meal, it was the bar mitzvah dinner for the son of a business associate of my wife's father, held at the old Cafe La Tour Restaurant in Chicago, on the top level of a Mies van der Rohe designed high-rise on the shore of Lake Michigan just north of the Loop.

We lost count of the number of courses at around 10, and they were still bringing out additional rounds of desserts as we were leaving.