Month: March 2011

Restaurant group deal promotion is a joke.

Yesterday, I brought my boyfriend to eat at a steak house, using vouchers I had purchased from a group-buy website. The voucher was a deal of RM39.90 instead of RM79.90 for 3-course meal with refillable drinks.

# – The “deal”.

Earlier last week, I called a published number to make my reservation and the call was received by a man who seemed to be in a mighty rush. I could barely hear him. Halfway through saying my name and details, he cut me off by saying “Text me”. I was still half-way speaking when I had to stop to clarify with him, “You mean to SMS you the details?”. He said, “Yeah, I’m not in restaurant now, just use this number”. I said OK and texted him my details. He replied with another SMS..

# – Our SMS correspondence.

Reservation was efficient and swift, almost downright robotic. Interestingly, I felt mildly abused.

So yeah, yesterday I took my bf to the restaurant. Honestly, I didn’t have supremely high expectations but I did expect fair service for RM40 a person.

Well, at this point, I really don’t feel like elaborating my experience there, why don’t I just list it down in point form?

1. We we were seated by a toilet.

Okay, first of all, the restaurant was not full. Not even close. As to why he sat us by a toilet when there were plenty of seats elsewhere available baffled me. On top of that, I made a reservation a week prior so seriously, he could have seated us somewhere more comfortable.

2. He asked to see my vouchers barely 10 seconds after I sat down.

“Can I see the vouchers?”. I obliged him. Okay, it’s efficiency, I tried to remind myself. But there it was, the unfamiliar lingering sense of being abused washed all over me again.

3. He gave us a piece of laminated menu with only the dishes offered on the deal printed on.

I didn’t give much thought to this at first. I selected my choice of appetizer, main & dessert but as I was beginning to be inundated with feeling of dissatisfaction at my “Flame Grilled Sirloin Steak (Australian grain fed beef, served with baked potato, sweet corn and a tangy side salad)” courtesy of the amount of inedible & chewy fatty bits, I started to wonder whether they had better stuff on the menu and then it hit me…

They didn’t even bother to show me their full menu. They didn’t care whether I’d return or not. Nice one :)

4. Clearing up plates really fast.

Wow, lightning speed clearing up of plates. Good thing I guess till our next point……

5. Bringing dessert really fast.

My bf has finished (or stopped attempting to eat, depending on how you look at it) his main course while I was still trying to eat mine. The efficient waiting staff cleared his plate. And then they brought him his dessert.

And mine too, while I was still eating my main.

It was ice cream atop an apple crumble. I was pissed mad.

6. There were no refillable drinks.

In all the times they approached us to clear our plates, not once that did offer to refill our drinks. NOT ONCE.

# – Free flow? What free flow?

We resorted to putting our empty glasses by the edge of the table hoping to attract some attention but yet, none noticed. Or none cared…I wonder?

At the end of dinner, I truly felt I had overpaid my dinner. RM39.90 for bland, tasteless mushroom soup or 2 pieces of miserable brushetta and the laughable stringy, chewy, fat beef they market as Australian grain-fed sirloins? The only decent thing I had eaten from the deal was the apple crumble dessert, but it wasn’t enough to sweeten the bitter taste I had acquired in my mouth.

As for the customer service? Wow, I’ve never felt so slighted in my life. I mean there are places in Malaysia that you don’t expect to be treated as a paying customer but this restaurant, with it semi-classy setup should not be one of those places. Not especially with the prices they’re charging.

In comparison, I went to Jake’s (a family steak house known for its rich & famous guests as well as its delicious but expensive steaks) dressed in a free t-shirt, sweat pants & dirty sneakers with NO reservation during their peak times and yet I did not feel remotely slighted. And most importantly, they did not seat me by the toilets. And they kept refilling my ice water.

Unless these restaurant owners are properly educated that these deals are platforms for them to prove that they’ve got it, I don’t think I’d ever buy a restaurant voucher from any group-buy website anymore.

We are just a speck on a sand.

How appropriate is it to blog excitedly about a loved one’s birthday and meeting Spice Girls’ Mel B on such a day?

Yes, today is my little brother’s 19th birthday and also the day I got to meet a bonafide celebrity.

But it’s also a day of sadness and fear as we watch Japan, a nation considered most well-prepared to face Mother Nature’s wrath, brought down to its knees.

I don’t know whether this melancholy I’m feeling is for Japan or for the nagging truth that our days are numbered?

We are insignificant :(

My first tarte tatin – a tale of accidental excellence.

This recipe is from Oliver Rowe, someone I stumbled upon on BBC website. If I had read the recipe thoroughly, I probably would not have made it. But like most Malaysians, I don’t read everything and hence found myself completely horrified half way through making this tarte tatin.

That said though, I’m so glad I pushed on and followed the recipe to a T. Okay…..maybe not to a T because I accidentally missed out putting a dollop of butter in one of the final steps. Still, the tart turned out extremely delicious. I’m not kidding, look at this:

# – Does this not look delicious to you?

What is tarte tatin? Basically, it’s an upside down tart of caramelised fruits such as apples or pears. I halved the recipe because there were only two of us. The tart still turned out perfect, so I have now promoted Oliver Rowe to my list of trustworthy chefs (as in those that dish out reliable recipes), joining the ranks of Gordon Ramsay and…and..Gordon Ramsay :P

Anyway, these are the ingredients you need for making tarte tatin for four. And yes, it only took two of us to clear up a dessert for 4. Now you know why I’ve been lamenting about buying a treadmill on Twitter.

    For the pastry:

  • 115g of plain flour
  • 113g of ice-cold butter
  • 55g of icing sugar
  • 1 egg yolk
    For the filling:

  • 2 Royal Gala apples (I totally veered off from choice of apples. What’s that phrase? Yeah, local limitations :P)
  • Juice from 1 lime (Also, instead of lemon, I used lime)
  • 55g of caster sugar
  • 55g of butter

And lets begin…

# – Peel and core apples then cut into wedges. Toss them around in juice of 1 lime. Stick them into the fridge.

# – Combine flour, icing sugar and butter in a bowl…

# – Then beat until resemble bread crumbs.

# – Now, pour in the single egg yolk. Beat again till combined.

At this point, the mixture will become somewhat of a cross between dough and batter – soft but not too soft. Now switch off your electrical hand mixer and use the very hands that your mother gave you to pack the mixture into a ball.

# – Then stick the mixture into a freezer bag.

# – And shove the bag of dough/batter in your freezer for an hour.

Basically you have about 45 minutes to kill, while waiting for your dough/batter thing to harden. Watch some TV, stalk someone online or play with your dog. As for me, I made cottage pie. You may now go sob in a corner.

Tick tock tick tock tick tock tick tock…

45 minutes later…

# – Heat up the castor sugar in a pot on medium heat for 10 minutes. Turn the pot all the time and keep a watchful eye as you want the sugar melted, not burnt.

Oliver Rowe used a saucepan that can be used in an oven, which greatly decreased dish washing duties. As I don’t have such acclaimed saucepan, I poured my melted sugar into a flan tin that I got from Daiso for RM5.

# – Pour melted sugar or jeng jeng jeng, CARAMEL!!!! into flan tin and make sure it’s covered all surface.

# – Now, take your chilled apples out from the fridge and lay them on the bottom of the flan tin, over the caramel. Just one layer because less is more. Less is more…

Something must have distracted me here because I don’t have any picture to illustrate but you have to stick the flan tin into the oven at 250 degrees celcius for 10 minutes, to bring out the juice in the apples.

# – In the meantime, prepare a grater, a bowl of caster sugar and a heatproof stand. You’re handling a really hot flan tin here so you don’t want to be scrambling for your stuff.

# – After 10 minutes, bring the flan tin out from the oven, put it over the heatproof stand and sprinkle caster sugar all over the apples. You’re supposed to put a dollop of butter now too but I forgot and it didn’t matter one bit.

And now, you must be thinking about the pastry right? Yeah, we’ve come to that stage…

# – Take out the hardened dough from your freezer…and grate it over the flan tin.

Say WHAT?

# – Yeap, grate the effin dough over the flan tin till you can’t see what’s underneath and it’s about 1 inch thick. DO NOT press the grated dough down.

Now stick the flan tin back into the oven for 20 minutes at 220 degrees celcius. Please don’t leave the tarte tatin in the oven to rest after 20 minutes because it will continue cooking. A mistake I made that caused my pastry to burnt slightly :(

(Though it did not hamper the taste of the tart one bit, not even a little.)

Put a plate over the flan tin and turned the tarte tatin out.

# – My first tarte tatin.

# – Juicy, caramelised apples on a buttery pastry…hmmmmm.

# – Great with a dollop of whipped cream but perfect on its own too ;)

Thanks Oliver for such an excellent dessert! My man loves me a little bit more thanks to you, hehehe.