Thursday, July 07, 2005
where not to eat in singapore
I read with much bemusement tym's where not to eat in singapore entry. I've been silently reading tym's blog for quite some time now - as I do with mrbrown and missdrinkalot, to name my favs.
But anyway, tym's latest eat-at-cartel-at-your-own-risk entry was so hilarious I couldn't fight the urge to respond. I had wanted to leave a comment - one of my firsts, I must add - but decided that I had enough to say to warrant an entry of my own.
So. Cafe Cartel. The last time I ate there, I almost suffered a heart attack over the dismal service. First up though, I must say that although I am a tad prissy when it comes to customer service (or lack thereof), I was in a cheery mood when I went to the Plaza Sing outlet for lunch. The bosses were all away from the office for some reason or another, so we fled the office and ended up in town for a 2-hour lunch (heh heh).
Between my lunch party of 4, we ordered 1 sandwich, 1 set lunch and 2 lasagnas (1 chicken, 1 beef). No special requests, either. And then we waited. And waited. And ate bread. And waited.
Finally the food began to arrive, the set lunch heading the pack. Consensus around the table was that the kitchen must be mass churning those out.
Next up, a waitress came with a plate of beef lasagna, or so she claimed. My colleague dug into it, half wondering if it was chicken but unable to distinguish - the tomato sauce was that overwhelming. Nevertheless, we took the waitress' word for it and believed it was beef.
After the next ten minutes, all we were missing was the chicken lasagna. So we gestured (frantically) for someone's attention and reminded him of that. It was after that that the strangest thing happened...
A male waiter (god knows what his problem is/was) suddenly appeared by the side of our table. All 4 faces turned to look up at him, only to find that he was straining his neck to intently stare at my colleague's half-eaten lasagna. Now, that was downright rude, wasn't it? So I asked loudly and grossly ironically, Can I help you?
He turned to look at me with a perplexed look on his face and was silent for an awkward 5 seconds before he said, I think that's the chicken lasagna.
Now we were perplexed. My colleague (rather comically) stopped short of shovelling another spoonful into her mouth. I clarified, The waitress said it was beef.
He evidently had no reply to that, so I guess his next best response was to ignore me. He turned and walked away, actually. So that pissed me off. I told my colleagues that it was obviously a mistake on their end and the waiter should have the decency to at least apologise. Apparently that remark was loud enough to jolt the waiter back from whatever planet his mind wandered to. When he returned shortly with yet another plate of beef lasagna, he made it a point to mumble under his breath a "sincere" sorry about that.
(Sidenote: By this time, I had polished off an entire philly steak sandwich. The episode took that long.)
Given the half-eaten state of the chicken lasagne, my poor colleagues had to make do with each other's order. We decided against insisting that they fix up a new plate of chicken lasagna - by the time we returned to the office, we would probably have been fired already.
And just like that, a supposedly happy lunch outing deep in the heart of town turned into a rather unhappy gastronomical experience. So much so that only speed-shopping after lunch could have saved the day.
So yeah, cartel is up there on my where-not-to-eat-in-singapore list. Right below that now-infamous char kway teow stall.
// posted by the commentator @ 6:17 pm 
Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]