James Mok’s Soliloquy

We order pizza delivery from Pizza Hut at least once every month and sometime once a week, and always the large Pan Pizza. Our last pizza from Pizza Hut was last month. This evening, after a long discussion on whether we should eat out but couldn’t decide on where to go, we ordered Pizza Hut again as usual.

During the phone order, the gal had us repeat everything 3 to 4 times and she still missed the order upon confirmation. The order was for a single Large Super Hawaiian Pan Pizza with Extra Cheese and that was it! How difficult is that?

Upon delivery, the pizza came in about 1-1/2 inch in diameter smaller! On first thought, we thought the gal missed the order again and had us down for a regular but the receipt does say PL as in Pan-Large. When M called it in, I realized it is bigger than a regular but clearly smaller than our usual large size pizza.

When they returned the first call, I explained that we thought it came in regular but I am pretty sure then it was just smaller than a large but definitely larger than a regular. The gal insisted that they mould all pizzas in the same size pan so they are all regulated. We were watching a movie on Now TV and I didn’t want to talk to them anymore so I just said I know it was smaller and said goodbye.

When they called again the second time, M answered the call. They said they did change the size of their large pizza to a smaller size at one time earlier to save costs. So I told them that that made it too expensive and that would be our very last Pizza Hut order, thank you very much.

Incidentally, the pizza cost HKD$130, plus a $10 tip I always give the delivery guy.

I had this Baked Ox Tongue Rice with Tomato Sauce for lunch this afternoon. When I was about half way done there was cream sauce unveiled underneath the tomato sauce!

I have a feeling that the latter half was a left over cream sauce rice dish and new rice was added to refill the plate and then covered with ox tongue and tomato sauce on top before it was baked.

Well… at least it was piping hot.

More people came down with stomach flu after eating buffets at yet another restaurant within weeks mainly from eating raw food.

Locals flock like locust at buffets. I never understand why people like buffet so much. At a buffet, the hot food are usually overcooked (or even uncooked at the very first round) and either left cold or still boiling hot. Cold food like sushi are either left staled or soggy and cold noodles stuck together. Even Ice-cream are either frozen and can’t be scooped or melted like milk shakes. It doesn’t matter where and how much they charge for the buffet, I have never had any decent food from anyone of them including the five hundred dollar lunch buffet at the Grand Hyatt.

I used to go to The Avenue at the Holiday Inn Golden Mile on Nathan Rood, TST for lunches quite often. They used to serve a la cart dishes only. The Managing Director there and I talked about how he could improve the food there every time. He once asked me whether he should change the appetizers into buffet style making the lunch a semi-buffet. He said it is because his boss had asked him to make the move since “everyone” (other hotels) are doing so. I told him that was precisely the reason he should not make the change. If I want a buffet or semi buffet, I could have gone to any other hotels. I told him the above reasons why any buffet is no good, and that if he had changed it to full or semi buffet, I would not go anymore.

A year later (just short of 3 years ago) during a visit, I realized the Avenue had changed their lunches into a semi-buffet and the Managing Director was no longer working there. Food was made very poorly as expected and I never went there again since.

Last week, Tin and I went to have lunch at Lime@T5. Set lunch prices range from HKD$38-$98 including soup, main course, and tea/coffee, and the top priced include dessert as well. There were only a couple of other tables with guests at around 1:00pm!

Promotions included a glass of fruit juice as well as a coupon for 5 set lunches per person at the same price within 2 weeks and you get one set lunch at the same price for free. Well, the prices were right for the food was relatively good, but ain’t 5-times-in-2-weeks good. I wanted to say services was good, but come to think of it, not. The services was not that good except for that one merrily waitress was very keen on serving everyone with a big smile all the time. Other than that, the waiter who starting with us kind of ignored us even though both Tin and I speaks fluent English and he doesn’t seem to speak a word of Chinese.

Water was served for free which is quite normal for restaurants in the Mongkok area. The only problem was they had the salt and pepper shakers mixed up, which is a major mistake to me especially when quite obviously they were trying to target foreigners which is close to non-existing in the area. I had it down in their guest book before we left.

Well, yesterday I went with Roy for lunch there. First of all, it was half full, so looks like the rounds of promo had worked.

However, problems surfaced immediately after we sat down. There were way too many customers for the waiters and waitresses. We waited about 5 minutes before I had to raise my voice a little to catch a busy waitress just to get our menus. Another waitress served us the food and had no clue as to which dish was who’s or that the drinks she was holding was our order. Half way through lunch, the hostess who was graping customers on the street level was now in the restaurant helping out diligently but without helping the customers vs service ratio much.

The cream of mushroom soup had been good last time was changed to chicken broth with pea and corn yesterday. This could be a daily change but one simply shouldn’t serve such a soup at all. Both Roy’s and my dishes were too salty. No more salt and pepper shaker all together on any table. And as you can see, bottled mineral water now on every table and perhaps no more free plain water. I didn’t ask for free water but to me the bottled water suggested that. $38 a set lunch and we were expected to pay what… $15 a bottle of water or however much they charge?! Why not just scrap the free glass of juice and serve plain water for free instead?

About the only thing that remains was that one single merrily waitress – still looking as happily as she was a week ago but just can’t serve them all no matter how hard she worked.

Promotions may or may not work but if one is caught unprepared before business picked up, the before promo would be all wasted and a whole lot of other promos wouldn’t do any good once the customers have been ill treated.