dinner at the ngee ann city branch of cedele today was such a disappointing experience for the following reasons:
1. no more soups: we were told when trying to place our orders that all 4 of their soup options were sold out except for the beef stew. this news, at the oh-so-late hour of 7.30pm, was so ridiculous that i couldn’t believe my ears. how can any restaurant run out of their main items – since cedele is known for their soups, among others – when it’s smack at dinner time?
2. substandard service: one thing more annoying that service staff who speak only mandarin are service staff who speak little English AND don’t speak mandarin. i don’t think the staff really understood me, and they were quite poorly trained. one of them noticed me wanting to order, noted my request, then promptly ignored me even while she walked up and down serving other people. another one kept trying to push the bill in my friend’s face, even though i had already stuck out one hand to take the bill. and the store manager - 上梁不正，下梁歪 – in response to my statement “oh, it’s only 7.30pm and you have no more soups?” could only offer “Yes, it’s a very saleable item.”
come on, if it’s saleable, then you should just make more of it! Also, the first word service staff should learn is “sorry”, followed by “thank you”. an apology doesn’t achieve much, but it always helps to not make things worse. And yes, the sarcasm was lost on her as well. sigh.
3. so-so food: i ordered a pesto fish spaghetti, but my dish had no pesto. what’s with singapore restaurants and pesto? they seriously don’t get the idea of what pesto ought to be (see my previous post) – just go to the supermarket and buy a bottle of the sauce, for goodness sakes. the pasta was dripping with oil and rather salty too, which means two more minus points.
so much for the good opinion i had of cedele. i should just heed my friend’s advice and head to the hawker centres whenever i eat out instead – at least even if the food is so-so and the service bad, it’s only costing me $5 or so.
i was never a cedele regular, but they’ve just lost one customer for good.
2 comments:
Perhaps you lived in Japan for too long? Sounds like you should stick to fine dining with such high expectations?
well 2 years isnt short but it's hardly a long time.. i just don't believe that anyone should accept poorly made food; cheap doesn't have to be bad.
cedele's food as i said above though not fantastic was okay. it was just the straw that broke the camel's back in this case.
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