The hubs and I were at The Waterfront at Desa Park City last night and decided to have a quick dinner at Secret Recipe before our Small Group meeting nearby.
Well, it’s probably gonna be our first and last time there. The food and service was terrible. When we walked through the glass doors, the manager (a young looking girl with a short ponytail dressed in a short-sleeved shirt and black jeans/pants) didn’t pay us any attention, as did the staff she was with.
We seated ourselves down. If there had been a “Please wait to be seated.” sign, the restaurant would have been empty and there’d be a queue behind the sign.
After a couple of minutes of waving and trying to get their attention, my hubby decided to just call for her with a loud “excuse me!” She saw us and finally came with the menus. We asked for her to clean our table because there were ants crawling all over the table and food remnants and water too. She didn’t respond.
To place our orders, we had to repeat the above process. By this time, the table was still not cleaned yet. So we repeated our request quite politely. After waiting a while more, we caught the attention of another male staff and he came to clean the table. Ants still crawled freely after.
Our orders (noodles in tom yum soup, Thai style fried rice, Apple juice with kasturi and a regular water) took a good half hour to come. The restaurant had 5 tables of customers, of which 1 was already done eating, 1 in the midst of eating and the other 3 (including us) were waiting for our food.
That’s my noodles in tom yum soup. Noodles with tom yum soup, a few slices of overlooked and tough chicken meat, cauliflower and mushrooms. I must say it looked unappetizing. Certainly not what I would expect from Secret Recipe.
We had to get the staff to check again on the Thai style fried rice. That took at least another 10 minutes to arrive. When it did arrive, something looked amiss with the dish. Mind you, Thai Style Fried Rice is our go-to dish at Secret Recipe. We like it and eat it probably once a month or more, usually at The Curve.
After peering at it for quite a bit, it dawned on me that the slices of eggs were missing. My husband concurred and he went on to comment that this was the worst Thai style fried rice he’s ever had at Secret Recipe.
My hubs got the attention of the manager who was behind the cake counter and asked for the bill. She saw him, acknowledged and turned to decorate a cake. There wasn’t anyone at the cake counter waiting for a cake to be decorated. So the hubs went to the cake counter personally and paid the bill there.
Well, service staff are the backbone of any outlet. Of course the food is important too. But the faces of the restaurant or retail outlet are representative of your company. How they behave, how well-trained they are, how polite and courteous and customer-oriented they are, will largely determine the amount of business you will have.
My hubs and I will not be going back to that Secret Recipe branch for now.
