A really bad restaurant

I seldom find a restaurant or food vendor that riles me up so much that I want to blog and say bad things about them.

But it looks like we found one last night – it’s called ‘Grill-Out‘, and it’s on the 7th floor of the confusingly laid-out Orchard Central. But before I proceed with the rest of the condemnation, I would like to commend the wait staff of the establishment for really trying their best. The shit was really beyond their control. So, if you’re the owner / HR manager of another establishment, when staff of Grill-Out come looking for jobs, hire them, ok? (It should be soon too).

As the name suggests, ‘Grill-Out’ is where you order steaks and chops. But whether you get them done to your liking really depends on whether your liking consists of tough, chewy Wagyu Ribeye slathered with black pepper sauce. Yes, they found a way to make wagyu tough and chewy.

Now, black pepper sauce and chewy beef wouldn’t be out of place at say, Jack’s Place or Swensen’s, but here’s the thing that sent me over the edge after Naomi’s mum ordered the $63 steak: they don’t serve plain water.

We was angry, the staff were apologetic.

They said that although they knew we weren’t the sort of customers who’d hog the tables and order plain water all night, there was nothing they could do about it because they are under pain of punishment if they were caught serving even a drop of plain water to a customer.

Not that there would’ve been any customer who’d be foolhardy enough to do that (hog the tables and order plain water all night), because in the al-fresco section (and great views this part of the restaurant has) of the establishment was a performing duo who cannot be described as a singing duo, because they were so off-key and off-rhythm, you’d have thought you were watching a Singapore Idol audition.

Thankfully for us, they took a long break between sets, so we could finish our dinner. To be fair, after we complained that we were eating wagyu jerky, the manager got the chef to get another portion of the same cut of wagyu ribeye, explaining to us that the piece that was selected was “near the end”, and so was “a bit tough”. They also took pains to serve a complimentary tiramisu, which was called a “marscapone mousse cake”.

In all, a horrible experience. Served me right anyway, thinking that just because a restaurant was several stories above Orchard Road, it was high end nosh.