The marking season has begun so please pardon me if I don't update as often as before! Although we're super busy with prepping students for year-end assessments as well as marking their practices and actual test scripts, we decided to put aside time a few days ago to visit Bread Street Kitchen to celebrate the bubs' birthday!
Because I don't watch any of Gordon Ramsay's food shows, I didn't have any expectations but I trusted that the food would be average/ above average, and it proved to be so. We loved all the dishes that we ordered because the pasta was well cooked and the mushroom sauce was surprisingly earthy but in a good way, his lamb shank was tender and well-cooked, and the dessert platter was satisfying! (We made the wrong choice to select 3 heavy desserts, so after a while it got a little too much for us so we'll make a note to choose 1-2 light desserts in future if we were to have the dessert platter again!)
While the food was good and the ambience pleasant, we were not impressed with the service. To be fair to the team at BSK, the service throughout the night was pretty standard but it wasn't great, and it kept at that standard till a waiter accidentally knocked the bubs' half-drunk cocktail over and the drink spilled on his shirt. The waiter said sorry once and then quickly proceeded to pass him 1 extra napkin to wipe up, then he walked away. Shortly after, the manager of the restaurant came by to apologise again and we said it's okay, so she left us as well. We weren't expecting them to apologise profusely but the truth is that their singular 'sorry's didn't sound sincere nor did they appear apologetic at all. I think it also says a lot when the diner at the next table offered his napkin to bubs to continue cleaning his shirt when he saw that all 3 napkins (bubs', the extra and mine) had been used.
At that point, I think we both felt a little disappointed with the service but because we're not the kind who will kick up a big fuss, we decided to get the bill so that we could leave. We noticed that they had not waived the charge for the cocktail which the waiter had spilled but paid for the entire meal anyway cos we didn't want to make a scene.
After we stood up to leave, the waiter came back with a new cocktail, supposedly to replace the one that was spilled. But we were already intending to leave, so we declined to have the replacement drink.
The entire episode kinda ruined the otherwise fine dining experience at Bread Street Kitchen, because we felt that communication could definitely have been improved. Either the waiter/ the manager could have just said that they'll waive the charge or get us a new drink or tell us how they would make up for knocking over their customers' drink. The last thing we would have expected is for them to apologise once and then left us there to do our own cleaning up.
We completely understand that such accidents happen, and we are not angry at the waiter for accidentally spilling the drink on us. But what we are not happy about is how the staff mishandled the situation after the drink had been spilled.
Oh well, it's alright (: There'll be many more good dining adventures to look forward to so we shan't harp too much on this one!
Happy weekend! (:
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