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2009-04-02
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Continuing on a Series of Unfortunately Bad Meals...Sometimes I wondered if that's a recurring nightmare, that bad meals are a waste of money and time, and experiences. It's like when you check out you'll get the account of all the good ol things you've eaten all your life, and then you look over, next to the goodies list you see a list 10 times longer, full of bad ones, and with worse entries that you think you can forget about how bad it is, but you fail even at that. The following, is one of
Just while you think April Fools are for pulling pranks on people, life, itself, takes absolute pleasure in kicking our sorry bottoms at any given moment. A party of four arrived at this little restaurant at the basement of this hotel, thinking against all odds that an advertisement that says 2 people dining for the price of 1. It's one of those the ad looks better than the real food. Arriving at the end of the staircase you'll be greeted with an L-shape dining room with the long side being the kitchen and the buffet stations. Wait, no, TABLES. On the other side are the tables we settled down on. The room was a tiresome space with custard yellow walls that looked better in a baby's room than a restaurant. We sat down in the dimly lit environment to find ourselves being one of 4 tables. Could it be that bad? We moved on to the food.
With the theme of Southeast Asian Fare, it's of no surprise that the But Kut Teh (肉骨茶） was on soup stand, The soup was promising by looks with chunks of pork bones in it, and floating fried bean curd to absorb the flavors. The aroma, however, disappointed. It smelled like pork bone soup with zero trace of that usual Medicinal ingredients you could often smell from two blocks away. This one just was no match with the name at all. The cream of potato soup was equally forgettable, but the bread you can count on,
For the cold appetizers I believed you can count on the salad itself, which was mesclun mix. The seafood platter featured what I failed to recognize as some kind of clam whose meat failed to give way to intensive chewing. The rest of appetizers are no impressive matters either. The soba noodles were soggy (before dressing), the Vietnamese Chicken Salad was overdressed with what may have been an overdose of salt and vinegar. The Korean kimchi was dependable, maybe because the kitchen didn't make it themselves? Anything out of a can is enjoyable...at one point I found myself slurping up canned apricots at the salad section.
The mains could only go downhill. The best main of the night was the "Fragrant Coconut Rice", It's piping hot and it's of perfect consistency -- sticky without being overly mushy, with a good aroma of coconut throughout, but that was it. The Thai Seafood Curry was a greenish yellow (neither green, nor yellow, it was in between) but surprisingly watery and bland. Fish was served whole immersed in a sour plum broth only to realize that the broth was not hot enough to keep the fish hot. The best part of the satay skewers was the peanut sauce that went with it. It has chunks of roasted peanuts in it, with the slightest savoury goodness from fish sauce and perhaps, coconut milk too. The meat on the skewers are best left unattended, as they just stuck on the skewers and were overcooked. Indonesian roast chicken resembled of tandoori chicken without the redness on the surface. It's dry and underseasoned. How exactly did the kitchen manage to make overcooked chicken mealy and soft was another kitchen mystery I will never find out about.
Shrimp cakes were good on the surface, as the breading was thin but the cake itself was thin and didn't taste like shrimps at all. The 'spring rolls' were ok, crispy on the outside with shreds of carrots as filling. Not my favorite but certainly the better item in the entire meal. Fried noodles were soggy and soft with Vietnamese sausage that tasted and looked the part of pork liver, though we confirmed it wasn't. Even the 'Gai Lan with Preserved Fish' managed to disappoint with undercooked stalks of gai lan throughout the entire dish. The "seafood with samba" was not as bad as any of the above. The squid and prawns were good and this was the only item I've had seconds.
Having been a dessert-lover all along, the desserts were in no match with anywhere that could remotely call itself a 'hotel'. The 'Glutinous Rice with Mango' could've benefited from more coconut milk. The mango chunks were ok but the rice just didn't make the grade. Minicups of fruit-topped desserts turned out to be an almond-flavored pudding underneath -- the white half-set dessert was too sweet and artificial, it looked slippery and white and you don't need me to remind you that it does not look like anything that should be on the dining table, or for that matter, anything to be swallowed at all. The "Papaya and Snow Fungus in Syrup" was one of very few things that came out steaming. It wasn't half as bad as the chocolate mousse that looked chocolatey but has no chocolate taste, or the coconut pudding that tasted faintly of milk and coconut essence (aftertaste). If there was anything you like that remotely reminded you of desserts, the steamed custard dumplings and the cheesecake were ok, but just ok, as the filling of the latter suffered from being too 'starchy'. Chunks of pineapple and watermelon could also draw the curtains to close for your already dreadful evening.
Feel free to splurge on coffee and tea, the 'hot chocolate', I discovered, was too sweet but just perfect if you add coffee in afterwards for a self-made treat resembling Mocha. Overall the food was beyond belief awful. Over dinner we had discussions over how we're going to rate this place, and with the party of four we were split between crying-face or "not applicable". But I'd give the crying face anyways, the service was slow, and the food was just described above...despicably bad in a sense that I felt that I have paid the money and spent the time like a fool believing that a place like this one could surprise and serve up something good. I felt that the kitchen has pulled this prank on us serving crappy food just to hear us complain about it, like they got kicks out of it. (so much for dedication to their work, huh?)
Walking out feeling this meal as a joke, I hope that people who do plan to go here will be the end of all endings, the bad ones at least. The option of revisiting here was nowhere near 'in consideration' for me, and hopefully...against all odds, things will look up for me, meal-wise, from this moment on.
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