Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Fellow Diners, Beware!!

*note: unusual content ahead. proceed at your own risk. adviced to read it without full stomach.

Life is full of surprises. 
I've learnt that very well recently.

It occured to me during a normal working day.
I was having dinner with my fellow colleagues in a local Chinese restaurant.
We always go to that restaurant as the food there are quite good and reasonably priced.
The restaurant is also quite famous for being 'efficient' as food is served promptly (within 5-8 minutes) as well.

So, as our food is served, we happily makan and makan lah.

As we are half way through our meal,
Suddenly, one of my colleague paused and pointed to her plate.

"Ewwwwwwwww...... Lipas......"

O.o
O.O
o.O

That's our first reaction.

Without second thought, I quickly re-check what I have on my plate and scanned for anything 'alien'.

None... Phew... 

I looked at my colleague's plate and found that there is this little dead roach (cooked till roasted with soy sauce) was lying there. 

I was like "wtf... if I were to be less cautious, I might ended up gobbling down that piece of thing, thinking it as just another chunk of protein'....

Of course, we raised our hand and anxiously waiting to see the restaurant's staff reaction when they discovered that little extra dish. The waiter (some foreign worker) came by. He looked at it, took my 'victimised' colleague's plate, and headed to the kitchen (the little roach is left on the table, not on the plate).

... ... ...

Then he came back with another plate of white rice.

WTF. Is that the way to handle this situation?

Getting upset, we quickly summoned another restaurant staff (a chinese lady).
She came by. We showed her.
She did not look as shocked as I expected.
Rather, she kept quiet and looked at us.
And asked, 

"So what do you want to do? Get a new one for you guys?"

(What the heck? Not even a word of apology?)

We were quite 'de-appetized' by this incident already. 
So we said we don't want a new one, and asked her to take away the dish.

Logically, the restaurant should either replace a 'clean' dish or cancell the order payment to 'compensate' for this kind of incident. Come on, if this restaurant were to be a registered class type, people would have caused a ruckus on sucn thing, to the extreme of going public and defame the restaurant until gulung tikar

I think even we have been really 'tolerant' for this situation and did not alarm any other diners around the restaurant. The place was quite full house during the incident by the way.

And so we called for the bill, expecting to only pay for those "healthily served" dish. 
Dim ji when I check the amount, we were charged full, including the 'tainted' dish. 

whaaddaafakkkkk...... not even a apology, and we have to pay in full like nothing happened???

We were furious and demanded for not paying the dish served with the roach. The waiter that handled the bill was giving us the kurang ajar look, and I saw the reaction of the restaurant boss when his mah jai informed him of our demand.

Mana tau that restaurant boss just show his long black face and reluctantly instructed his staff to proceed with our demand. So we ended up paying for the 'clean' food and left the restaurant with anger, dissapointment and frustration.

I am so regret that we did not make a scene for that situation. I think even a 3 year old would know how to handle this situation better. I think at least an apology for the blunder will be enough, and there is no need to give free meal or unreasonable compensation to remedy this matter. 

Lesson leart: To beware and watch what you eat while you dine outside. Life is indeed full of surprises.

Post blogging note: I chose not to disclose the restaurant name as I just want to alert everybody as the title quoted. I think there is no need to create public dispute on somebody. Just be carefull in everything.

6 comments:

Yinfun said...

Seriously! We should have taken a picture!
Did you even see that the cleanliness of the restaurant was actually classified as "B"....they should have flung that!

japanesecarp said...

yeah man... but we were too upset to think about that...

anyways.. thank goodness that we are still healthy and nothing struck to us yet...

we just hav to be extra careful next time...

audinary said...

Cooking your own food is the healtiest option, safest as well. Actually I have no choice here, eating out is just too expensive.

i.v.y*ph^ng said...

give us the exact restaurant name and location, pls. that's the best u can do to benefit the rest!

rgds

japanesecarp said...

audinary: yeah... cooking own food is always the best...

how ya doing in Woking?
When is the baby going to due?

japanesecarp said...

i.v.y*ph^ng: wil let u know the name and location.. tsk tsk... okay.. a hint.. it's a restaurant in my hometown... ;P