"It is not merely of some importance but is of fundamental importance that justice should not only be done,
but should manifestly and undoubtedly be seen to be done.
"

- Lord Chief Justice Hewart

Sunday, June 7, 2009

Fail Foundry

I know I am very creative with article titles. Nothing much happened during this weekend. Though I am proud to announce that I managed to get Hamachi working again and my friends and I were playing Demigod a bit.

Photo linked from www.foodpoi.com

Rayn and I had dinner with my parents. My mom wanted to try the Food Foundry which I think was another less than a satisfying experience. My boss wrote a review here about 2 years ago and he seemed to have been kind with his ratings. Perhaps it was still decent back then. What I found amusing was that he wrote that the pasta was oily which was what Rayn said about her's, though it was a different dish.

Upon arrival we were given some makeshift menu. I assume they were trying to be creative but it did not "win me over". Looking at the prices of the dishes there, the first thing that came to my mind was the statement being that the food had to be really good or it had to be a rip off. Sadly, the latter was true.

I ordered the Food Foundry Chicken Chop while Rayn ordered the Penne Arrabiate and my parents had some rice dish with chicken. The chicken chop arrived, I was less than impressed. In fact the three letters of "double yoo tee eff" was having a rerun marathon in my head.

The portion of the chicken was small. It was accompanied by a sparingly amount of mash potatoes with some gerkins and brinjal. They were all very conversative servings. The chicken was not tender, it was lumpy and everything on the plate tasted bland. The watery sauce was doing it's best to provide flavor for all of it.

The waiter then brought Rayn's pasta. The waiter serves her the pasta and says to her that they ran out of penne so they substituted it with spaghetti instead. They assumed she would be okay with it and just served it to her face. That kind of pissed me off. What kind of establishment serves you something you did not order? Looking at it, the pasta sauce looked really runny and she commented that it was oily.

My parents' order were up next. The ironic thing was, their chicken servings was larger than mine. Theirs looked like some gourmet chicken rice. Just chicken, a few slices of cucumbers and the rice.

I actually saw frames of newspaper reviews about this place on their walls. Sometimes I wonder if there are shady things going on that actually get establishments like these publicized in newspapers.

Final thoughts are, The Mage Cafe serves tastier food with better portions at cheaper prices. Which will be my future review in weeks to come.

3 response[s]:

Rayn said...

It was a disappointment. You remember also that my initial order was the Pan-grilled dory with some cream? They were out of that too.

I got to rub in on that menu bit. The clipboard with sheets of menu listing didn't impress me as well. Reason being I've seen this concept in the Apartment (Restaurant) @ the Curve before and the presentation was much better. Though, to be fair, I cannot say for sure which establishment came up with the idea first.

My actual second disappointment was the water. Having used to pay for expensive water I should at least get what I asked for. I ordered warm water but I got a slightly cooler than room temperature water instead.

enochho said...

most newspaper reviews can't really be trusted as the reviewers are usually invited by the restaurant and then given a sample of their best stuff. not necessarily what's representative of the real menu.

best bets are fellow bloggers, that is, if you could decipher their writings (sometimes)

the menu thing probably originated with this place, as it's older than the Apartment, but hey, it's not always who does it first, it's who does it best.

email2me said...

Need to drop by again something to reevaluate.