What a dinner!

December 28th, 2008 at 23:59 · Filed Under Critiques, Days in My Life, Eating Out, Family, Malacca 

After my karate class, I went down town to pick up my parents. The traffic was massive. Getting into town took almost 30 minutes and getting out of it took another 15 minutes. When we reached home, the two older boys were ready. Dmitry was wearing his new watch. We were going out for dinner on the last Sunday of 2008. I quickly took my shower then we left the house at around 1900.

Some days ago, our friend recommended a Hakka restaurant at Taman Merdeka, Batu Berendam. We were very eager to try out this restaurant.

We arrived at the restaurant around 1915 hours. It was quite well decorated and look clean. We went in and found a table. But the waitress gave us the menu rather late. We had to wait for about 20 minutes (or more) for the menu. The waitress was then quick to take our orders. She could speak Hakka. She is a da pu ke (大埔客). Apparently, she is the owner or the wife of the restaurant owner or the chef who is a hai luk feng ke (海陆凤客). I asked her to recommend some dishes. I ordered four simple dishes: braised pork belly, salt baked chicken, a vegetable and tou fu with basil and peppermint. These are the indigenous Hakka dishes. So, we were happily waiting for the food to be served.

The time passed minute after minute. We waited until 2000 hours still not sight of our food nor a pot of hot water we requested. Nowadays, we will bring our own good quality tea leaves to restaurant and ask for a pot of hot water to make our own tea. Finally, when I caught one of the waitress’ attention and asked her where was the pot of hot water, it seemed like she didn’t understand what I had requested. Anyway, the pot of hot water arrived without tea cups! Can you imagine making a pot of tea and drinking without tea cups?

I called the waitress and another waitress came. Obviously she is a foreign worker. This time, she brought us four tea cups. We needed five and she only brought us four. Hello! Does she know how to count? Worst thing was that, one of the tea cup had two baby cockroaches crawling on it! Yucks!

LA went to complain and to ask for new one. One good thing is that, Dmitry is now able to complain and make suggestion! He told me earlier that we should go to the other restaurant at Bukit Baru. The kids loves the food there and the service is good and the price is very reasonable. After hearing the fuss, he said, “See! I told you to go to the other restaurant.” Yeah. He was right but we never know if we didn’t try, right?

Alright, after some more minutes of waiting, the dishes finally arrived. It was almost 2015 and all of us were very hungry. The two younger boys were impatient. We dug in like backhoes. The foods were quite delicious though but talking about the service, sigh….

Four simple dishes took ages to come out of the kitchen. Can you imagine that? The workforce (waitresses) is very disoriented and unorganized. Everything is a massive lump of mess like the traffic in the town.

We filled our tummy and washed down with a few cups of Chinese tea. When the bill came, it was ridiculously expensive in our dining experience. The bill was RM62 for four simple dishes and the portion were not big enough for four adults and three kids! At the Bukit Baru restaurant, it only costs us less than RM60 for five adults and three kids with five dishes and we can go home with absolute satisfaction of our taste buds and tummies. This? I still needed a supper and LA desperately needed a supper, definitely! The supper cost another RM5!

This is our first time and also the last time to patron this restaurant. We thought we could have a nice and enjoyable dinner on the last Sunday of 2008 but unfortunately it turned otherwise.

Tags:

Comments

Leave a Reply