Crappy Crappy!

1) NOW I have a bone to pick with the restaurant that gave my family and I such a lousy service the other day. This is one fight I did not pick; it was shoved under my nose.

As you know, I don't suffer fools gladly; so Anon, thanks for the opportunity to pull you folks down a notch or two from your perch. All I can say is that you have brought this unto yourself.

Always remember, in the restaurant business, you are as good as your food AND your service. Good food count for nuts if your service isn't up to par.

Staff who pull a long muncung (snout) at customers are absolute no-nos. We don't pay good money to be served by an irritable pout (we can get that at home for free).

I don't know who this Anon responding sourly to my negative comments is, but my best bet is that Anon is someone associated either with the shop (owner/friend/staff/whoever) or with the food critic site (which did an excellent write-up of the place, by the way). Anon sounds like a her; not that I care for the gender.

Instead of picking a fight with me, they should concentrate their efforts in improving their service. Unfortunately, they lacked the grace to admit their service wasn't so chummy.

Wake up lah, please. I am not your competitor; I don't own a makan joint neither do I know anyone who does. I'm just someone who, once upon a time, had wanted to become your regular patron/customer and spread the word around that you had a good thing going. It was you who deprived me of the privilege.

The one thing that I can be certain of is this; d'Cengkih of Taman Tun Dr Ismail has earned a black mark in my list of restaurants of disrepute and I shall avoid it at all cost, no matter how good they proclaim their menu to be.

You may ask why am I so harsh in my judgement. I have a ready answer for this. It is neatly packaged under the words "Attitude" and "Humility".

A restaurant that simply cannot bear criticisms (even if they are true) and comes out with guns blazing at anyone criticising it (even if the criticisms are constructive), is not worth the hassle. This is one restaurant with a massive attitude problem.

Worse, they lack the humility to admit their own shortcomings. Instead they keep hitting back at the critique (and that's me). Let it be known that my family wasn't the only dissatisfied patrons the other day. A few others also walked out.

I have nothing to fear as I spoke the truth and as can be seen, truth hurts. I had the grace of not naming the shop in my article then. Now I'm throwing caution to the winds; I don't really care anymore.

Neither do I care if their spread is the best in this whole wide world (anyway, I can't vouch for it for I didn't get my order), because their attitude still stinks.

You would have earned merit points in my book had you responded with: "Yes we were shorthanded the other day, but we shall buck up. We are sorry to have let you and your family down, but we welcome you to visit us again."

And you know what? I would have given the restaurant both a second chance and a second mention, which may even be highly favourable to you. It's a bit too late now.

2) Years ago, there was a Chinese-Muslim lady selling one of the best chicken rice (if not the best) I had ever tasted in Subang Jaya. In fact, if you mentioned Subang Jaya and Nasi Ayam in the same breath, it was her name that came to mind. Unfortunately enough, whilst her chicken rice was superb, her mouth wasn't. You winced at her choice of words for her workers.

Her off-putting, public maki hamun and carut marut for her hapless staff were so commonplace and well-known to Subang Jaya residents that many patrons simply stopped going, my family included. We would rather buy 'run-of-the-mill' chicken rice from other traders, who treated their workers with dignity.

I heard she has since passed away. May Allah swt be kind to her soul.