Well, the place is like the size of a hawker stall, seats about 20 i think and they only had one server for all of us. Needless to say, the service was atrocious. Stud was shocked & amazed (and may I add, appalled?) by how small the kitchen is.
We went during lunch and their lunch menu only has set meals, the ala carte menu is for dinner only. The only options were Duck breast cream pasta or sausage spaghetti aglio olio. How about offering something other than pasta for choice, you think? It comes with a soup of the day (it was tomato clam today) and a drink. Well, we waited a good 15 minutes for our peach tea drink, and was offered only upon inquiry. One would think that serving drinks is a very basic thing in a food establishment and would be done almost immediately. But, oh well. The server had obviously forgotten about us.
Next, we waited for our tomato clam soup. A party of four sat down next to us about 15 minutes after we sat down. They were served their drinks, soups and one of their main courses before we even had our soup! Again, we had to remind the server and explained that we were in a hurry.
Finally, when our soup did arrive, it was cold. It was not meant to be a cold soup, at least we hope. However, it was a decent tasting tomato base soup, better than Cosafe, and a pretty generous portion of clams to its credit. It would have been much nicer if it was hot and if we got it sooner.
The main dishes finally arrived and they looked pretty basic to us. We had one of each to try them both. The sausage was tasty and a large portion. The aglio olio spaghetti was also a very generous portion but was a bit on the dry side. Nothing to make me jump up and down.
The duck breast seemed to be a bit undercooked as it was still red in the middle. We asked the staff if was purposely done like that and was told yes. (Note: ask the customers if they don't mind if their duck or any meat for that matter is not fully cooked when they order as not everyone will know how best to prepare certain meats). They did offer to cook it more if we preferred, but we decided to be adventurous. It tasted nice with a good sear on the outside and a tender meat on the inside, but was a bit chewy. The cream pasta was your basic creamy pasta. Nothing else to say about that. Presentation was average as it just looked like duck breasts on pasta and a big sausage on , once again, pasta.
Overall, this place is ok but they are unprepared for big lunch time crowd, not that it will be too big, given the space constraints anyway. Our lunch experience took 1.5hrs including waiting time, way too long for office workers out for lunch break. Chef has to work on time management skills and come out with a more efficient system for server(s). It shouldn't take so long to prepare a basic meal of pasta & soup.
Still, we will want to try it again during dinner when their full menu is at our disposal. This way, we can really truly evaluate its cuisine properly instead of just a simple lunch set. However, it is probably not worth all the hype from the reviews it has gotten.
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