When the saints go marching in…

You would need to have the patience of a saint if you were to drop by this new place in town…

…for lunch or dinner. I was indeed thrilled when I first spotted it at the Lot 9 commercial area across the road from the Delta Mall along Pedada Road – I love Thai cuisine, you see, and I just could not wait to go there and give it a try. That was why when my girl was home for the weekend, we made a bee line to the place with our hopes up high.

Upon entering the place, I would say that I was a bit disappointed. No, the place was nice and new, pretty decent looking and clean, but other than the minimal décor here…

…and there…

…there wasn’t much else that would give one the feeling that he or she was in a Thai restaurant.

Now, to say the service was poor would be an understatement – it really sucked big time. We had to find a vacant table ourselves and even after sitting there for a while, nobody came to give us a menu to browse through until an ex-classmate of mine who was there with his missus and some friends of theirs…

…came over to our table and gave me one of theirs – they had three. It wasn’t an impressive menu – just something typed and printed on a pink manila card and laminated. It would not have cost very much and they could have easily prepared a lot more, enough to go round.

Looking at what was on the menu, it appeared that they did not seem to have very much to offer – there were three individual sets at RM15.00 each but sorry, those were not available. It looked like everyone else ordered the sets for 3-4 (RM39.00) or for 5-6 (RM59.00) and I did see the usual Thai delights like tom yam or green curry in the sets but unfortunately, those were not on the list of individual items that one could order. After having made up our minds as to what we wanted, I had to wave frantically to grab the attention of one of the two waitresses to get her to come to our table and take our orders. No, they were not idling away or what – it did appear to me that they were all over the place, obviously so very busy but they did not seem to be getting anything done at all.

I did not want anything particularly heavy for lunch so in the end, I ordered their pineapple fried rice (RM6.50)…

…which did not come out served in the scooped-out fruit but that indeed was a saving grace as when they do that at some Thai places that I’ve been to, I always have this idea that they would be recycling the pineapples and using them again and again. I have seen places where the pineapples were already quite dried and shriveled and they were still using them to serve the fried rice. Tsk! Tsk!

That, unfortunately, was served without any cutlery – were we supposed to eat with our hands? All right, it was supposed to be an individual order but we were sharing and seeing that the service was so very bad, I got up to get some plates and forks and spoons for ourselves but they insisted that I sat down and they would bring them to our table…and yes, they did – after a very long time and the rice had turned quite cold!

Was it any good? It was all right, this much I would say – it had the fragrance of kunyit (turmeric) and a bit of serai (lemon grass) but the bits of pineapple were few and far between and there was hardly any taste of that in the dish. If somebody had served me that out of the blue, I would never have guessed it was pineapple fried rice, not at all.

The Thai spring rolls (RM10.00) were nice…

…and they had tung hoon (glass noodles) in the filling…

That was indeed something new to me – I had never eaten anything like that before and it was quite tasty…except that I did think it would be a good idea if they had let the rolls stand on some kitchen towel first after frying to drain away the oil before serving…

After we had finished the two, we waited…and waited…and waited and nothing came. I even had time to go outside for some fresh air and I walked round the building to the back to peep into the kitchen. No, they were not short-handed. I saw three ladies and two guys who did look like Thais to me and all of them were busy doing something.

Then I went back to our table and waited…and waited…and waited…and finally, something came – their pineapple fried rice AGAIN!!! We had it sent back and not too long after that, the pad thai (RM6.00) came…

It was a disappointment – so sweet and heavily laden with msg, not nice….and I’ve never disliked pad thai anywhere else. This was the first. We could not even finish that small plate, the three of us.

The Thai fish cakes (RM10.00) came at long last…

…and they were extremely salty and a bit tough/too rubbery…

I had expected them to be something like otak-otak but they were not and unless one has a liking for those exotic tastes with Thai basil, serai and maybe bunga kantan, I don’t think he or she would not like this at all.

The som tam we ordered never came and by then, it was already some one and half hours since we arrived so I went to cancel that last order and settle the bill. Even that took a long time and the guy, probably the boss, kept apologizing. The total came up to RM40.60 and he asked if I had 60 sen. WHAT??? For all that I had gone through, the least he could do was to write that off and collect RM40.00 only from me…and I would have given him a little credit for doing that. No, unfortunately, he didn’t…so that’s another thumbs down!

We left the place with me patting myself on the back for such good self-control and the ability to endure all that without blowing my top…and no prize for guessing whether we’re ever going back there again.