The White Rabbit

A group of us went to TWR for some post dinner drinks after satisfying our taste buds at the relish. What ensued was somewhat atrocious and certainly quite unforgettable and possibly marking a new high or rather low on the service standard in most F&B outlets in Singapore. (depending how you see it, really).

Upon parking, we found out that there's a compulsory valet service at a hefty price of $5. Nevermind that we could very well park the car on our own, why thank you. But I digress, what's $5 compared to spending time with friends, 2 of which were celebrating their birthday.

Excitedly, after sorting out the parking matters, we walked into the beautifully renovated church what with dimmed lights and intricate stained glasses. It is indeed beautiful, right down to the typeface used on the menu.

So far, so good huh, until, we tried to get the attention of the wait staff, except for the very fact that, none came by even tho' we were waving our hands quite abit. Perhaps they were shorthanded yes, perhaps there were just too many customers, yes. PERHAPS, they just weren't attentive, yes. Too many perhaps. Finally the time came for us to order some drinks, and ordered, we did.

A few of us decided to stick to tea for our choice in beverage, and time surely did pass fast, 30 minutes or so, was tea served? Surely it was, (30 minutes later of course!) in a very nice plain white tea cup on a saucer.

$6.50 for a cup of tea.

In case you missed it.

$6.50 for a cup of lukewarm tea, and yes sir, no tea-bag, yes madam, no tea-bag indeed.

A few of us started discussing about the very steep price of the tea and decided that perhaps this is a very high class place which explains the price. So, very slowly we sipped.

Oh how we sipped. And it was gone.

And in came a hunk, we looked, oh it's our friend and we waved and he sat down and ordered himself a tea too. Tea came, but tea came this time in a nice plain white tea cup on a matching saucer with A POT.

What's happening? Did tea decide to be generous and serve itself in a pot? Or?

The plot thickened.

So it was another round of hands waving and when we did finally get someone to come by for us to inquire about this very strange tea situation, it was almost time to go home. But, being the inquisitive beings we are, we asked nonetheless only to find out, any order of tea will definitely come with a pot. And the reason why we didn't get the pot of tea, and were served a cup of tea instead was, "sorry madam, we ran out of tea pots."

Which translated to, we were short-changed and nobody even bothered to tell us until we saw, we asked and we conquered.

If you are still reading about my little tea problem by now, could you please say W00T?

Nonetheless, the wait staff mumbled a few words which I believed was sorry and that we would have our pots of tea soon, turned out to be suffering from time elasticity disease. Because "soon" translated to another 15 minutes wait and boy was that tedious or what for some tea.

So yes, we had our pots of tea, oh diluted sort of tea.

And the night soon ended because the music was schizo and we had enough of disappointment disguised as tea.

Will I come back for more tea? Teeheehee, I don't tea so.

A friend and I were thinking of a nice place for dinner on Friday and she mentioned she had heard that a new restaurant called The White Rabbit was opening up.

I immediately checked HGW, but alas, there was no review yet at that point. Google however pointed me to chubbyhubby. When I saw the pictures at the website, I was completely stunned. The pics were gorgeous!

So, we made a reseveration for dinner. I was actually a little apprehensive because:
1. Dempsey is a cursed place - where restaurants more often than not rely on their wonderful unique location to sell themselves, and think it justifiable to serve average food at exorbitant prices. Growl.

2. The place just opened - would we be subjecting ourselves to painful service and half-baked food?

So.

Ambience - the pictures on chubbyhubby lived up to their expectations! The place was wonderfully done up. I liked the way the lights played on structures in the restaurant and against the grills to throw shadows against the walls and ceiling.

A big negative though was the noise level. We sat in the side alcove and was spared most of it but I was quite hoarse by the time I left. But my goodness, when I went into the proper hall for the toilet, the noise level almost bowled over. It must be the high ceilings and lack of soft furnishing - I don't know how anyone can have a proper conversation in the main hall!

Service - Pretty good. Not at all like it was their first week. Bread came promptly, food came in a timely flow, the waitress was friendly and offered suggestions.

Food - What did I say about the Dempsey curse? Yep. There was no escape. It was mediocre, mediocre, mediocre.

We shared the prawn bisque soup (that was average). I had the duck with orange sauce. That was again average and a little dry. My friend's sole was certaintly below average, bogged down by a fish that was not too fresh. The thing about fish is, you don't have to be an expert to know when it is not fresh. Your body knows, your taste buds know. There's this certain flatness and mushy taste to old fish. We shared the mac and cheese side and the strawberry dessert....again average and forgetable. I am not being very descriptive here, but what's there to say about average? Nothing teased our taste buds, nothing made me put down my utensiles and have a moment. It was all just blaaaaah.

I thought about the food and wondered whether I could attribute it to the restaurant being new. But you know, bad service, forgotten orders and mixed up dishes can be attributed to start-up hiccups....but food that is not delicious? If a cook is mediocre, he is mediocre.

At the prices they were charging ($$30+++ for a main), it just ain't worth it.

The place was half empty when we were there for lunch. We were a party of 4 and all of us chose from their 3 course set lunch of a starter, a main and dessert.

For starters we all had : slow cooked egg with shallot and wine sauce.

The main dishes : 2 orders of braised lamb shank with couscous; 1 ribeye steak with fries and 1 baby back ribs in bbq sauce.

All the dishes were lukewarm when they arrived at our table. When we commented on it to the wait staff, all the response we got was : " oh, we'll feed back to our kitchen..." They were not even mildly apologetic! None of the dishes were worth shouting about. They were okay, but you can get this kind of standard in other restaurants.

The desserts: 2 orders for their black forest cake which the wait staff said was their signature dessert; 1 sticky toffee pudding and one warm peanut butter chocolate tart.

We had ordered tea and coffee (which was not part of the set menu)but the desserts took so long to arrive, we thought that they's forgotten about our orders. When they finally arrived, I took one look at my dessert ( the black forest cake) and lost any desire to eat it. Yes, they did state quite clearly in the menu that it's "not the way you remember it" - they had totally de-constructed it, which was fine... but really... the presentation ... Let me put it this way, if you have brown coloured food with a mousse-like texture and it's shaped like sausages, and served on a bed of crushed oreo cookies... It doesn't look very appetising. I did try a little bit of it, though. It was nothing to shout about.

What we were totally unprepared for was the male wait staff ( we shall refer to him as J---- ,since we are not allowed to identify him name) who came up to us while we were mid-way thru dessert and told us : "we close at 3pm" We were dumbstruck for a while. What? Sorry, what's that supposed to mean? And J---- repeated : "we close at 3pm"

We were still mid-way thru our dessert and the only reason we were still there at 2:30pm was because dessert took half a lifetime to arrive! While the rest of our party continued with our dessert, we could see J---- checking his watch every 5 mins or so!

We were so appalled by this kind of attitude that when J---- brought our bill, we asked him if that's how he was trained - to tell customers bluntly, we close at 3pm? He replied, yes, with a smirk!
Well, I have only this to say: I will make return visits to an establishment even if the food is mediocre but the service is good, but I refuse to patronise a place no matter how good the food is, if the wait staff has attitude problems!

Maybe The White Rabbit should consider being a theme restaurant. The theme being : LUKEWARM FOOD AND SERVICE WITH A SNARL.