Mainland China, Anna Nagar west. 25.12.2021
How the mighty have fallen!
Living in Anna Nagar for the past 30-odd years, it’s refreshing to see such a vast number of restaurants and dining options in the area. Having dined at other locations of this chain, Mainland China was the first choice for a quiet Christmas Day family dinner and we made our way to the Anna Nagar branch.
What struck me immediately was the cold reception in both attitude and staff behaviour. But not wanting to make a big deal of it, we made our way to a table for 4 and sat ourselves down.
Despite there being quite a few empty tables and what seemed like ages, a waiter appeared and straight away started pushing for the buffet option.
I politely declined mentioning that we wanted an a la carte dinner and asked for the menu card. having realised we were not interested in the buffet option, he disappeared and was just loitering around without making eye contact with anyone(it’s a migrant waiters’ strategy these days, I think!)and didn’t bother to return.
Knowing it was getting late to change our mind and head elsewhere, I asked for the head waiter and he comes over and quite rudely says that it’s a buffet dinner(again!) and that he’s doing us a favor by ’allowing’ a la carte dining there.
After my initial shock at this reply. I told him I will wait for the a la carte option for which he says immediately that it will take at least half an hour to attend to us(even getting the menu card!).
At this point, we got irritated enough and decided to leave. On the way out we noticed just 2 buffet chafing/serving dishes piled with sad-looking fried rice and another with noodles and the usual soup pot and a salad tray, that’s it!
The starters(which looked like stale meat disguised with a heavy coating of batter and spice, were being carried around to a couple of tables and it looked like they were emptying their freezers of all rotten and aged meat!).
I’m glad we decided to walk away and found a much better and delightful, professional and lively restaurant called Little Soi just a couple of kms away.
Had I been in a more aggressive mood I would have called the food inspectors on the restaurant, shut the sh#t shop and rounded up the entire staff and packed them off to wherever they came from.