Six Stars? My Foot!
I wanted to post this review on TripAdvisor, but unfortunately (or maybe fortunately for this restaurant) because they only allow reviews of hotels and not the restaurant within a hotel, and they don’t have this restaurant listed, I was unable to post it there. So here it is on my blog.
I-Vee and I were at Royale Chulan yesterday for the Malaysian International Dance Championship, and after our prize presentation, we decided to celebrate (as well as fill our empty stomachs).
We went to Warisan Cafe which is inside the six-star hotel, which unfortunately had service which was far from six stars.
When we arrived, we wanted to sit at a table which had a couch instead of at the table with chairs; however the two tables that were still available hadn’t even been cleaned up yet. So we had to take a table which had chairs instead.
We waited for a while before I-Vee finally flagged someone for the menu. Mind you, it’s not that they were unaware that we were there; a waitress had tried to direct us to the standalone table before we attempted to take the table with the couch.
And even so, we found that the staff were more focused on cleaning up the two tables that we initially took a look at, instead of handing us the menu.
We placed our order, and then waited for our early dinner to arrive. We whiled away our time chatting and/or playing with our phones (we were actually too tired to chat) before finally impatiently wondered what was taking our meal so long.
I didn’t actually check the time because for once I wasn’t wearing my watch, but judging from the Plants vs Zombies game I was playing, it was probably more than 20 minutes before our food arrived.
I-Vee had ordered tenderloin steak, whereas I ordered the rack of lamb. And as we picked up our fork, we suddenly realised that it was only accompanied with a spoon and a butter knife.
I-Vee hailed the head waiter and all she did was hold up the butter knife and gave him a look. Fortunately he did know what she was referring to, because he promptly called a waitress to get steak knives. I couldn’t really hear what he said, but there was something about “if they are not at the back, get them from…” and I couldn’t make out where.
And it was another five minutes before the waitress appeared through the front door (she had gone out through a side door) with two steak knives. By then I had eaten all my accompanying vegetables and mashed potatoes as I had been pretty hungry.
The food was not excellent. I would say that the quality is acceptable, but not excellent. Because the restaurant is in a hotel, they charge extremely high prices; the tenderloin steak was RM55 and the lamb was RM60 – before tax. If the food quality matched the price, I wouldn’t blink an eye. But the thing is, I’ve had much better food at other restaurants at a fraction of the price. Like Monte’s – ooohhh, I love Monte’s!!!
In fact, I-Vee’s steak was still very raw although she asked for medium. Halfway through, she sent the steak back for further cooking, and when it came back, it was not much better. And in I-Vee’s words, “Six star hotels would usually rearrange the vegetables on the plate to make it look nice.” That’s based on her experiences of six star hotels. Her plate came back looking the same way she sent it back. Personally though, I’d probably prefer it that way because it means no one (theoretically) touched my food.
Anyway. After we ate, I-Vee called for the bill, and that again took another five minutes before she flagged another waiter for the bill, who said that the bill was on the way. When it finally came, we didn’t have enough small bills and had to put larger bills – we didn’t want to wait for change. And true enough… it took a long time before the change came back. The waiter who returned the change explained that their “system was down”.
Right. That would certainly explain why everything was so slow then. Including the handing of the menu and the appearance of steak knives. (insert dripping sarcasm here)
This is not to say that the service staff were not polite. They are polite as most staff are in the service industry. It was just not six star service. The price and star rating hardly justified the service we got.
I think the only people who would eat there are hotel guests, or like in our case, are already there and just need something to eat. I would certainly not bother to go out of my way to this restaurant in this hotel for a meal. I have been to much better places closer to home with far better food and better service, at a signficantly lower cost.
November 23, 2010
Accidental Discoveries
Some of the best things in life are discovered by accident.
For example, some of the most used inventions in today’s world were discovered quite by accident. Vulcanized rubber (rubber that was resistant to heat and cold, and did not change shape even after the force exerted was lifted) was not invented, but was found when a mixture of rubber, sulphur and lead was spilt – by accident – on a hot stove. Penicillin – most important scientific breakthroughs ever made – was discovered simply because Alexander Fleming did not clean up his workstation before going on a vacation, and upon his return found that bacteria did not thrive near some of his cultures which had a strange fungus growing on them.
Well, I didn’t make any breakthrough discoveries but the other day I found this really nice mamak quite by accident.
I was at e@Curve with Aiman and we were both feeling out of pocket, so we walked around the lower ground floor where the “cheaper” restaurants were.
There was this restaurant called “Ah Cheng Laksa” which proclaimed to be “Best in Subang Jaya & Sunway… some even said in PJ!” That was a pretty bold statement to make considering that PJ was full of fantastic food, so we thought OK, let’s just give that a try.
It must either be a cook who simply could not recreate the same taste, or the people in Subang Jaya & Sunway have very poor taste… because the food was below average and very dissatisfying. After the meal, we were still hungry (who wouldn’t be?) and Aiman was staring at Popeye’s which was just opposite the restaurant. But I was starting to feel sleepy and I wanted teh tarik, and the only mamak we knew was at Tesco’s. We didn’t really want to walk that far, and it with great reluctance we dragged ourselves all the way through Curve to Tesco’s. We were even tempted to stop at Pappa Rich, but my craving for the good ol’ mamak tea made me insist on going on.
When we got to Tesco’s, we didn’t see the mamak we were looking for. I guess that goes to show how long we have not been to Tesco’s… but I don’t know when the mamak changed. We didn’t even remember the name of the mamak that used to be there, and if it was the same (we used to just call it “The mamak at Tesco’s”), and what we saw in its place was an air-conditioned restaurant called “Q Bistro” with modern chairs and tables. We were already there and we didn’t really want to waste that walk, so we peered at the menu and saw mamak-looking food. Oh what the hey. Let’s just give it a try.
And the food was really good! And so were the drinks!
They had a huge variety of food, ranging from roti canai to nasi kandar to western food. It was basically a mamak, but with fancier setup, pretty menus, and comfortable chairs… and similar prices! We even came back to Q Bistro for dinner after we watched a movie.
I like it so much that I’ll probably go back there again soon just for the food. And we wouldn’t have found the place if we didn’t try the monstrosity called Ah Cheng Laksa and have been completely dissatisfied.