The Prime Society

Ooooh my first review.... I've never really been THAT compelled to write a review about a food establishment ...that was until my visit to Prime Society. [My gf is still kicking me (quite literally) as we speak…]

Bottomline:
Food – 4 mediocre at best thanks to the cold crap we were served.
Ambience – 8
Value – 3 (I lied. It's actually a 2)
Service – 5 ONLY because the more senior staff apologized profusely to us. The younger waiters should be better trained and more customer-orientated.

This is the place to be if you like your food cold, & absolutely lovveeee to drink ice water (which is the only thing that they seem to serve competently). Place your orders 1 hour in advance & bring board games or friends who have incessant verbal diarrhoea because you will need some form of entertainment while waiting for your food!


WRITE-UP [DETAILED – because memories like these should not be forgotten]

Pre-dinner: Did my usual preparations/ pre-dinner snooping around and read up some reviews on the hungrygowhere website. Kinda formed an opinion by then, but decided to take a chance on this place.

Arrival 745pm: Liked the decor (high ceiling, comfy chairs & cushions...etc). Thankfully we were given a table indoors, so I didn't have to be bothered with the thought of rats scurrying around as we dined. OK to be fair to them there were NO mouse/ rat sightings, so we can assume that Management has taken some steps to address this problem.

Placing orders 805pm: After some minor banter, we managed to get the attention of a waiter, and placed our orders. Our orders were promptly noted and the waiter zipped off with the efficiency of the kopi-shop uncle @ Ya-kun. Now I liked the concept of having smart-ass tidbits of info/ comments regarding the different parts of the animals/ veggies on pieces of paper to compliment the menu. It never hurts to amuse your patrons!

The Wait (Chapter I) 830pm: No food in sight. I've read the various anatomies of the fish, cow, pig, turd...etc, and I've combed through the menu 4 times. Gotta say that their wine collection is not that fantastic, it would really help if they secured more wine to compliment their prime cuts.

The Wait (Chapter II) 845pm: What's this? The tables which were filled AFTER we placed our orders were served with their main dishes? Hmm my spidey-sense is tingling and my stomach's rumbling, better check on the progress of our orders. Surprisingly, 1 of the waiters literally ignored me despite my signaling & direct eye contact with him. Hey man I'm not trying to pick you up, I don't swing that way, I just want answerssss, where's my food dammit...Another waiter promised to check on our orders, but he didn't return for another good 15- 20 min. Now that’s what I call service man! They should seriously consider penning a book on running a restaurant! Ignore your customers! Make em wait! Triple their marginal utility by making your customers wait really really really long for their food!

The Wait (Chapter III) 9pm: No answers. No food. No attention. My niece @ day-care gets better service than this.

FOOD!!! 915pm: Ahhh the food has arrived! The sight of steaks with little slabs of garlic butter being served on mini-cutting boards, and complimented with greens & fries were a sight for sore eyes. Now for the taste test!

Taste Test:
1. Fries - Warm, crunchy, soft on the insides. Not those badly thawed fries you get @ half-baked western food stalls. PASS!
2. Steak - WTF??? This thing's ...cold. Last time I checked, steak should NEVER be served cold. Unless of course this is Prime Society’s specialty :) FAIL XXX
3. Shrooms & greens – Nothing fantastic to boot about.
4. Burger – I thought I couldn’t go wrong by ordering the burger. Boy I was wrong…. The patty was cold. Taste-wise, the burger was good, but not $25-worth kinda good (Thanks to the cold patty). You could get cheaper burgers out there which could be on par with the ones served here.

The Decision 920pm: After much discussion & deliberation, some of my friends decided to send their steaks back on the assurance (by a waiter) that they were to be warmed up, and served in no later than 5 – 10min. By then I was too hungry to be bothered about returning my food, & chowed down on my cold burger.

The Regret 945pm-ish: The steaks did not return from their tour of duty to the kitchen. Wasn’t too sure about the entire fiasco, but Management tried to “fix” the situation by giving us new steaks etc. We weren’t buying it and those peeps who did not get their food were royally POed. We rejected the new steaks and asked for the dessert menu instead.

The Fix 1015pm: Management expressed their apologies (like for the 3rd time) and made good by giving us free dessert. Since the steaks were already prepared, they were served to us free-of-charge. Surprise, surprise! The steaks were cold yet again! You gotta admit that Prime Society really sticks to their specialty in serving cold steaks!

I did not for a moment doubt the sincerity of the apologies by Management, but did we really have to go down this road? Why bother waiting till the customer is left starving & hungry, and POed before apologizing? There really isn’t a point in trying to “fix” the situation with free desserts when the dining experience of the patron has been ruined with the tardy service & poor standards of service! I’m looking forward to enjoying a nice sizzling steak, and then I get slapped with
i) A long wait time
ii) Poor service (initially)
iii) Cold food
iv) Cold food (again)
v) A dinner which mostly consists of fries & dessert (Yipeee)

It’s a pity that I’m giving Prime Society such a bad review because this place has a lot of potential. They’ve got all the marketing & décor right, but they fail to deliver in terms of the actual product & service. Hope they buck up and clean up their act before the real reviewers pay them a visit.


Sidenote: Quite a number of parking lots there were diagonally positioned (perhaps to maximise space/ adapt to the narrow roads). Apparently we SGians are not only bad drivers, we bad parkers as well! Folks, there is a reason why the lines are there - to designate the friggin car lots! Behold the spectacle of idiots here who most definitely deserve to be ass-r#ped for their supreme ability to occupy 2 lots with a single car! You can check out the now defunct blog http://www.parkingidiots.blogspot.com/ for more.

My date and I were at Prime Society yesterday Friday evening 8/8/08 hoping to enjoy a nice dinner after hearing rave reviews about it from friends.

We ordered fillet mignon and ribeye steaks. My date wanted it to be
medium while I wanted mine medium rare respectively.

As we partook in our meals, my date found her steak to be more raw
than it should be, and asked it to be more thoroughly cooked. When her
steak returned, some parts of it were still too raw to her satisfaction.

I feedback to our waiter that her steak was not satisfactory. My steak
too, after much later consumption, had some parts that were too raw
for my liking.

The waiter did not take our feedback kindly and was adamant that the
steaks were done as per our instructions.

When I settled the bill with another waiter (different from our
serving waiter), I once again reiterated that our steaks were not up
to standard. This waiter went off to clarify with the first serving
waiter. The first waiter then returned to confront us by slamming
loudly the leather case in close proximity to my ears (which enclosed
the bill and my credit card) which almost threw my card out!

I was close to reprimanding him in the restaurant there and then but I held back as I was with company.

After settling the bill, we walked out and I again mentioned this to
the front receptionist to register our dissatisfaction with our food.

In a nutshell, I am very displeased with the food as well as the poor
service rendered by our serving waiter.

Suffice to say, we will never return to this establishment, and will also advise our friends and clients likewise.

I read about The Prime Society in the Business Times on 23 July 2007, and decided to check it out with my family. Just how would it compare with Lawry's, Morton's, Just Steak etc?

Firstly, Prime Society has a 'hip factor' because it's in Tanglin Village, one of the most happening places in town at the moment. There's ample seating space outside if you just want drinks.

A very cheerful lady took my phone reservation earlier on. I'd give bonus points just because she knew how to pronounce and spell my name properly, which has been a rare experience for me in Singapore! Definitely no Lians or Bengs in here.

The restaurant is clean and classy without being too showy, even with a few chandeliers. They took pains to spruce up the place all the way up to the ceiling, with lots of aeration and spotlights, and rustic-looking brick walls on the inside.

We brought our own wine. The corkage charge was $28 and the staff took great pains to remind us (at the entrance and again at the table) about it. However, that was all the attention we got for a while. The wine sat on our table for a long time despite us telling a male waiter that we wanted it prepared. Finally a more savvy-looking female waitress showed up and got things going. I have to agree with the Business Times article that the service is choppy. Hopefully they will work out these kinks in time.

The menu stated that it was a temporary one. The management is currently working on a full-sized menu. In fact the temporary menu has only limited cuts of steak - Fillet Mignon, marbled Ribeye and Sirloin. There is also fish, pasta, ribs, sandwiches, salads and side dishes.

We had mushroom soup, which was the soup of the day. It was not bad at all. It is not the white, starchy stuff you get at cheaper restaurants. This soup was pureed into a fine brown texture. The first smell that hit me though was something more exquisite. Truffle oil! It was drizzled onto the soup. There was also melted cheese in the middle. It was one of the more pungent variety. Some kind of sprout was also sprinkled on top of the soup. Overall, the soup was quite unusual because of the strong personalities of its added ingredients, and we wiped our bowls clean.


For the main course, my mum and sister ordered a 160g Fillet Mignon each but the kitchen accidentally served my mum a larger cut, which costs $6 more. A waiter told us this after we had all started eating, then added that they would absorb the cost. That was nice of them.


My dad had the marbled Ribeye and it was apparently so soft that you didn't even need a knife to cut it! I am so going to try that next time.


Wanting to try something different, I ordered the Australian Sirloin but it was average. On the outside, it was full-flavoured but not spectacular. It claimed to have crackling fat but while the fat was somewhat tasty, it was definitely not crispy or crunchy.

The steaks came with many types of sauces and side dishes. We each had a side of grilled vegetables (aubergine, zucchini, carrots) which were heavenly, and fries which were crispy and seasoned with pepper. We didn't even need ketchup. We chose to have red wine sauce, avocado cheese sauce, pepper sauce and Bearnaise sauce to go with our steaks. We finished every bit of steak on our plates.


We also ordered a mixed salad which was larger than I expected for a side dish. The green olives were huge - like the size of a big toe! The semi-grilled baby tomatoes were succulent.

Some of you may appreciate the wry sense of humour, from the signboard that says this place is only for the Upper Cut, to the paper placemats that give serious-looking labels to cross-sections of fish, pork, and even artichokes. But when you read them carefully, you will notice puns, innuendo and digs at certain celebrities like Paris Hilton. It is just as well that you do, to distract you from the waiting time in between.

The cutlery is also served in a most unusual manner, in envelopes addressed to each patron. The envelopes are sealed, meaning you have to tear them, which makes me wonder what their stationery costs are like. But they're quirky and have differentiated themselves from other steakhouses. Welcome this new kid on the block.