We gave the steamboat a miss, and settled for two variants
of pan mee. The traditional, soupy, pan mee and the dry pan mee. The restaurant
gives patrons a choice of thin, thick and hand kneaded mee. I chose the thick for the traditional and the
hand kneaded for the dry. We also added on a drink for RM1.
The ice lemon tea and grass jelly (cincau) were pretty good.
The tea was not preprocessed and tasted as if it really was brewed, and had a
good dash of lemon squeezed in. The grass jelly was finely grated and the sugar
syrup used was fine and lightly scented with pandan. A pretty auspicious start.
Half an hour in, and despite us being the only other table
in the establishment, with the first patrons having eaten and left, our noodles
had not arrived. I beckoned Mr-server-with-charming-accent and asked if the
food normally took that long. The manager came out and apologized a few minutes
later and said that the kitchen mistook the order for a take-away and were
redoing the meals.
Ten minutes later, bringing the wait for a bowl of pan mee
to the longest I have ever waited and will ever wait, the dry pan mee was
brought forth. My dining partner took pity on me and offered me the
accompanying soup. The first spoonful spelt food doom. Thin, insipid soup, with
a token four leaves of boxthorn vegetable leaves and a slice of fried bean
curd.
The dry pan mee tasted okay, but my fellow diner likened to
the noodle itself to being like eating undercooked fettuccine. Hubba Bubba gum
had a softer consistency than this dough!
When my steaming bowl of traditional pan mee arrived, I
hastened to try the chilli sauce. We all know that the chilli can help
transcend a pan mee experience. It was so scorchingly hot, with no saving
undernote of sweet, nor an overlay of sour or salty. I began to develop
tinnitus in my ears from that one taste alone. The hot soup gave no relief. It
was a repeat of the same soup which accompanied the dry pan mee. Glorified dish
water. The fried bean curd was spat out immediately, as it was still hard and cardboard
like. Uncooked.
After lifting the noodles with my chopsticks and developing
wrist ache (yes, the dough was that hard and heavy), I decided that it was not
worth the calories. Better a heaping portion of tostada chips which go straight
to my hips, but leave me with a warm, fuzzy food high, than this sludge.
Possibly for the first time in my life, I left my bowl of food untouched and
steaming, and called for the bill.
I was just going to write it off as a NEVER AGAIN, but I
decided I needed to speak to the manager. To her credit, she was very polite,
and very sorry. Of course, in barely restrained, hunger-fueled irritation, very
little satisfies. But I was not looking for satisfaction. I was doing my part
to make sure no other hungry diner has to suffer through this. And as I told
the lady manager, this was more than a waste of money. It was a waste of food,
or raw ingredients, of energy and fossil fuel. It is just wrong on so many
counts.
Again, to her everlasting credit, even though I never
brought up recompense, she refunded me the whole amount of my bill - RMM20.55.
As I headed home to whiz up the protein shake I should have
just drunk in the first place, I thought that if there was anything I’d take
from this experience, it would be the manager. I’d love to install her in a
good restaurant, with higher than average wages. She kept a cool head, was
unintimidated by a patron speaking a language which was not her own first language,
and yet she did everything right. Was this lady a relative or even the owner of
See U? It would have explained how she could write off the bill. Whatever it
was, I go to a place to eat for the food, not the after sales service. Because if
the food is good, very little damage control is needed.
See U Village Steamboat
Paradigm Mall
Lot CF-18 & 30, Level CC
Tel: +603 7887 9954
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