Monday, May 03, 2010

A dinner letdown

I made plans a week in advance to take my mum and brother Azan out to dinner last Friday to the Indonesian restaurant where we took my brother Azan out about 2 weeks ago. I thought that it would be a nice treat for my mum as 2 weeks ago, the four of us – my hubby and I, my son and brother quite enjoyed the meal there, it being a little different from the places that we would usually go out for dinner.


My niece joined the dinner.


The dinner, however, unfortunately, turned out to be quite a disappointment for my mum. I think everything started going downhill when my brother overslept (trust my brother to oversleep! LOL! *grin*) and instead of picking up my mum very much earlier to bring her to meet us at the restaurant, he only arrived at my brother’s place at close to 8.30pm. By the time we all got to the restaurant, it was already close to 9.00pm and everyone was already very hungry and everyone’s moods were basically not upbeat anymore, and the attitude of the waitress and the cook of the restaurant just added salt to the wound.

After travelling all the way from Bukit Subang, a 20 minutes drive to the restaurant, and having to wait for my brother to pick her up for almost 2 hours, I can understand that my mum had very high expectations of the food. But, the first sign of problems started when most of the items we wanted to order were not available.

When we finally made up our minds on what to order, they got our orders all wrong and never even bothered to tell us about it. My niece, Kuya, had ordered fried Ikan Keli Sambal, but she was served Ikan Kerapu instead. Only when we inquired did they tell us that they have run out of Ikan Keli.

Couldn’t they have told us earlier that they were out of Ikan Keli instead of serving it up with the assumption that it will be okay with us? We could have wanted another dish instead, but, not wanting to kick up a fuss, my niece accepted the Ikan Kerapu dish as she too was getting to be very hungry.


The cook and the waitress put up a show of drama accusing each other for failing to let us know that they had run out of the Ikan Keli. Like as if it they did no wrong! They never even apologised for their mistakes.

My mum had ordered Avocado Juice earlier on, but, only after many minutes had passed by only did the waitress came back to tell us that they had also ran out of the avocado. In fact, many of the dishes listed on the menu were not available. I wondered why they even bother to have it on the menu in the first place. Just for show, is it?

The next problem came soon after that when, after waiting for almost one hour for my food, they came to tell me that the dish I had ordered was not available as they have ran out of lemon. I had ordered Lemon Chicken. Did it take them one whole hour to realised that they had ran out of lemon? Surely they would have known much earlier that they were running out of lemon if there were many orders for the Lemon Chicken, but the restaurant was hardly even a third full. Uurrghhh! I felt like screaming at them!!!!!

Again, they put up a show of arguing between the waitress and the cook when the cook accused the waitress for not letting us know earlier when she had already informed the waitress that they had already ran out of lemon when the order was put to the kitchen. That really got me really angry, and I almost felt like just walking out of the restaurant, but, as I was not eating alone, and I was feeling really hungry, I just told them to bring the same thing my niece ordered – Buttered Chicken with rice.


Did they apologise for their failure to let us know about the shortage of the lemon? You can bet the answer is a big NO! Uurrgghhh!

When the Buttered Chicken Rice finally arrived some 20 minutes later, I had already lost most of my appetite. I couldn’t even finished half of it. Luckily my brother was around to clean the plate for me. *grin*

My hubby had Ayam Penyet which was nothing to shout about but, as he was hungry, he ate silently.


I think the only person who quite enjoyed his food was my brother who had Bakmi Chicken served in the cracker plate with a bowl of soup.


When it was time to pay, we insisted that they give us a discount for two reasons – that they had failed to let us know well in advance that they did not have what we ordered, and that they failed to admit their mistake and apologize to us. Even after we told them nice that a restaurant of such nature should train their staff to have a little bit more of soft skill, the apologies were never forthcoming.

They first gave us a 5% discount, but after we kicked up quite a fuss, telling them that they will be losing more customers if they go on handling their customers like this, they gave us a 10% discount We paid, but not before telling them that this will be the last time that we will be dining there.

Very sorry, Ma, for the lousy evening. I hope the dessert at Benta Kaya Kuala Lipis made up a little bit for the terrible food and service at Baso. Maybe the next time you come down to KL again, we will take you out to a better restaurant to make up for that night. I also hope that at least the lunch a week earlier at Nando’s had been an enjoyable lunch. I will blog about that in a later posting.

No comments: