Bad Food Galore

Just recently, we tried out The Blue Cow Café at Plaza Damas which was highlighted in the papers for burgers that were out of this world. We also ventured into The Cookbook at Sunway Giza. Actually that one was a second visit. So here are our reviews of these two eateries.

 

The Blue Cow Café was a little below expectations. We couldn’t get past how the food and the décor and the waiters all didn’t seem to gel. There was just something off about the entire environment. The waiters weren’t very helpful or maybe they just didn’t know their food; I saw a girl in the kitchen (open to public viewing mind you) using her hands when building a burger, I later saw the same girl go off to the freezer and used the same pair of hands (yeah, she only had one pair!) to open and close the freezer door as well as handle all sorts of Tupperware containers. There was a giant refrigerator stuck all over with Tiger beer stickers whilst the wallpaper and wall treatments didn’t scream cheap coffeeshop. A simple visit to the place will have you wondering the same thing – did I wander into a meat house that is just using an-ex restaurant locale while it looks for its own home???

 

Foodwise, I did not enjoy my lamb burger. I like my lamb and this burger was most definitely a disappointment – it wasn’t lamby in the least. I could taste a mish mash of items but not really any lamb. Hubby had a bite and liked it but when he had to finish the rest of my burger, finally understood my disappointment. His dish was the Pork Platter – the bacon was wondrous but that’s about itlah.

 

Overall, the place left me wondering what the reviewer was talking about. We paid a lot of money for nothing much by way of good food. It’s a no no for me on a return visit – we don’t actually award it the Sakae Award for suckiness but it won’t get a Recommend that’s for sure.

 

And now, for The Cookbook. This was actually a second visit because my parents were visiting and my mum mentioned that the place had been reviewed in the papers. Ok, after our experience there that night, I should treat all reviews in the papers with high suspicion. In fact, perhaps the moment an establishment is reviewed in the paper, it should scream ‘AVOID AVOID AVOID’ to me!

 

The first time we visited The Cookbook, I didn’t like it. I have a genuine dislike for places selling coffeeshop hawker fare for high prices. And what’s worse is when they don’t even do it as well as the old men and women out there sloggin away in non-airconditioned kopitiams. The only thing this place was good for to me, was their novel way of decorating the café and presenting their food.

 

By the way, DO NOT have the Homemade Sour Plum drink – yowzers!

 

This second time around that we were there, out of 4 dishes ordered, only 1 was good – however, everything was too salty! The worst thing is that my poor mother struggled through her Dry Curry Noodles for so long telling everyone it was salty til we actually tried it. It was unbelievable! I mean there is salty and then there is The Cookbook’s salty! YIKES!

 

When we referred it to the manager, he took it back and brought back a new plate – but this time without the chicken rolls that come with the dish. Hmmmm….if you’re going to replace a dish, it’s only professional if you replace the entire dish, not half a dish! And he tried to offer a lame excuse that at the end of the day, the sediment of the curry was more salty. Ummm….a chef who valued his name and his job would never allow that to happen. If that was acceptable, that means if I go to Shangri-La’s Chinese Restaurant at the end of the day, I would have to accept bad food??

 

The manager further went on to say that he had had a lot of orders for the dish that night and we were the only ones who complained. THAT really got JH’s goat! It was error piled upon error – replacing the dish half-assed was bad enough, now it was compounded with a lame excuse for the poor quality of the food and then aggravated further by an employee telling the customer he was basically wrong. And to top it all off, the cherry on the shit cake – the new dish had mee as bland as dishwater.

 

Caveat emptor if you’re trying out The Cookbook at Sunway Giza – the wait staff is inefficient (don’t even get me started on how they didn’t know how to give us proper utensils etc), the food is mediocre at best, the manager is lousy and customer service is atrocious. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

 

We felt so badly about it that we were about to rename ‘The Sakae Award’ with ‘The Cookbook….NOT’ award!