slosh down the pepper!

OLDTOWN

Visited OLDTOWN cafe at 'The Playground @ Big Splash' last Sunday. The service was lousy. Tempest was very annoyed at the lack of workflow. There was nobody to attend to us even when we were queuing up for 5 minutes, until I caught hold of one waitress and asked to be seated in the empty seats at one corner.

As soon as we were seated, we busied ourselves with the 'order list' placed in abundance on the table. We were supposed to choose and tick our orders before passing the list to the waitress. The system is similar to Cafe Cartel. Then Tempest noticed that there weren't any prices listed on the order list. That was when we noted that the menus were not given to us. We tried to look around with blank lost looks on our faces, but the waitresses paid no heed to us. The couple behind us must have seen our agony and handed us 2 copies of the menu from their table.

After we selected our orders, Tempest walked up to the corner where waitresses would key in the orders using some LCD screen. No waitress again! He had to stand around for 5 minutes before trying hard to walk to someone to pass the order list. Very lousy service.

5 -10minutes later, our food was served. That was pretty prompt. Probably cos' the manager was in the kitchen all the while, attending to the cooks rather than the customers. We noted that the waitress rarely talked to the customers, only amongst themselves. But at least they appeared friendly, smiling when they delivered the food. But some were a little bad-mannered; they threw the plate of toast onto the table top so hard that it bounced a little. And they anyhow placed the cutlery on the table, with no neatness or arrangements of any sort. Throughout the meal, Tempest was rattling off how lousy the service was, and how the manager should have taken care to train the employees and made himself available to the customers at all times, instead of holing up in the kitchen or behind the serving counter all day long. I was a little more tolerant than him when I remembered that the almost same thing happens at work. The supervisor is always expected to help and even do the most menial of stuffs like photocopying or in this case, emptying the spoons into the respective containers. Plus it is not easy to manage workers and get them to do it in the exact way you wish for.

Anyway.. to the food.

I ordered a bowl of 'Assam Laksa'. The soup was thick and brownish from the assam water. Pretty sour and spicy. The noodles were clear and smooth, often slipping away from my chopsticks. Instead of the usual tau pok (fried beancurd), bean sprouts, eggs, clams found in our local laksa, this one contained sardines and cucumber.

Tempest had curry chicken with rice. The keropok that came together was crispy and tasty. The rice had a bit of coconut scent to it. Very subtle. If it were nasi lemak, I would probably fail the rice :p The curry only had 2 little drumsticks. Tender meat, but very oily. The curry was spicy and saltish; I liked it.

We also took the french toast. It is like those thick toasts sold by HK cafes. What surprised us was the peanut butter spread in the center! It looked somewhat very similar to the picture on the right, except that there was no block of butter given.

I had an Oldtown iced white coffee while Tempest took the 'Kau' (thick) version. Both cost $1.90 each! The 'kau' version looks very much like a chocolate drink. The thick viscous fluid is sweet and full flavored. Got kick!

Prices are still reasonable; most main courses cost about $ 5 - 7 each. In total, we paid about $18 - $20 for the above. There was no GST, but the 10% service charge still applies.

FOOD: 3.5 out of 5
SERVICE: 1 out of 5

posted by slingwoof @ 4/07/2008 05:00:00 PM