To start off with, this recent visit of mine to this cafe was the 4th this year (though I didn't review every visit if there is nothing much different from the previous visit) and I thought I would pen it down of this "dramatic" experience....We went for the lunch buffet on a weekday, the very first time on weekday, as our previous visits were usually on weekends. Our last visit was in June (before that was March and April).
The buffet spread was very limited as compared to it's weekend one and also with other hotels within the same price or class range, but overall the food were ok. Some of the nice food included the teriyaki chicken and satay (both were well marinated), salted fish fried rice, stewed mutton and beef, roast chicken etc.
For improvements, good if they can provide another soup choice, possibly Asian one, as there was only the cauliflower cream soup on the day of our visit. The vegetarian fried bee hoon, some parts were not cooked well (as it was hard like iron steels or charred) and limited pastries. The layout and arrangement was quite squeezy at the main buffet counter and always a long queue, which they can space out the salad/fruits to the other side, with the pastries or seafood section as there were ample empty spaces and looked so sparingly unlike the main section, overloaded.
Coffee and tea were inclusive in the buffet spread.
Service was generally fine as staff were efficient in clearing used plates.
However, there was an issue that I think was unnecessary but the cafe had made things "difficult" for diners. In order to enjoy complimentary carpark, one will have to sign up for the hotel membership. (this should not be compulsory, the very time we encountered after visiting so many hotels locally and overseas)
However, we had already signed up for the membership before from our previous visits in March and June (it was an Indian supervisor/manager then who passed us the membership form to sign up) and I showed the softcopy of the "My Millennium" card from my phone to the cashier before the battery went flat. But the staff/cashier insisted that we needed to sign up for the "new" membership again. Our memberships are still active as we do receive the updates and news from the hotel regularly.
So she asked us to scan the QR code to sign up but it didn't work even she tried to do so several times but failed. Staff was inflexible. We spent quite a lot of time doing this.
All other hotels would gladly give out complimentary carpark vouchers even without asking. And also wondered how come we needed to sign up for the membership again as we just did so about 2 months ago. Is this the right way to up the membership base? (even repeated ones)
In fact, just 2 days ago we visited its sister hotel, Orchard Hotel for buffet, the service was superb (food was outstanding) and staff gladly gave out parking tickets to us without asking, or requesting us to sign up for membership in order to enjoy complimentary carparking.
I think this was not being customer oriented. Because of this incident, it somehow dampened our spirit. We would not revisit again considering the service and limited spread of food. (Btw, the carpark fee was about $20, way even higher than in Orchard area) With the price, we can go other hotels with better food and service, do checkout my earlier reviews for them.
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