Crystal Jade Kitchen 翡翠小厨 (Ngee Ann City)

We wanted something chinese for dinner and we ended up here. Its pretty busy for a workday evening and well noisy like any typical chinese restaurant.

We were shown to our seats pretty quickly as theres no queue (goodness gracious me) and showed the menu. Lady got our drink orders while we decide on what we want to have. The menu was comprehensive with few but good selections of dim sum, porride, noodles, rice and stir-fried dishes and well dessert was typical chinese restaurant goodies like double boiled white fungus kinda nourishing selections.

We decided to go for dim sum and ordered quite a few however many things ran out. No Har Kow, No BBQ Ribs and we were left with some carrot cakes and some other crystal dumplings which were pretty tasty. While we didn't have our full, we wanted to order more and it took a while to get the attention of the waitresses.

We took a pretty long while to get the menu and another pretty long while to order somemore... So if you are here, decide quickly and once your food is on the table, its difficult to get noticed by the staff again. We ordered other food such as porridge and noodles from the chicken and roast pork section. While the chicken and roast pork noodles looked little and pork limp and cold, my century egg porridge did not arrive with any century egg. While I asked the waitress about it (took me a long while again), she just laughed, merely apologised and returned my bowl to the counter and all they did was to add some century egg and return the bowl to me. BTW, i'm expecting them to change the entire thing... I'm not into wasting food but that's service ain't it. I mean i paid premium and expect to be served premium. If I were at the hawker centre, i won't even mind if the porridge didn't come with century eggs yet service was real let down this one.

I was pretty irritated when to call for the bill took me another 5 - 10 mins just to get the attention. The food is acceptable, well service is LOUSY, though the staffs are smiley and friendly but seemed to be very much in their own world, ambience nice but I'm not coming back... I'm sorry. You only get to have bad service when your pricing is dirt cheap and well food damn freaking yummy and you have neither...

Location: 4/5 Food Quality: 3.5/5 Service: 1/5 Price: 3/5 Ambience: 3/5

Will I return: Likely not

Will I bring my friends: If i have too, i will bring a loud speaker..... to talk louder so i can break their (in your own world syndrome)

I went to this outlet on a few occasions, but this time it wasn’t the best of occasions. I had one of my worst dining experience in terms of service. Today I went there together with 2 of my friends. I haven’t had any meal for the day so I was already feeling gorgeously hungry.

All in all, I had waited for more than 30 minutes and my order has yet to be served. My 2 friend’s orders had already been served and yet my order of Ee Fu Noodle with shredded meat in spicy sauce has not been served. I felt bad that my friends waited for me to tuck in together even when I told them to go ahead.

I asked one of the supervisor in-charge about my order, and said she would check my order. Instead, she blatantly walked off to serve other customers and failing to keep to her words. Infuriated, I called upon the manager and demanded my food to be served. Finally some response came and nobody in the restaurant realises that my order has been omitted even though it was keyed into the POS.

I simply don’t understand why it takes so long to whip up a Ee Fu Noodle than the Congee and Wanton Mee that my friends ordered, and why can such mistake be made even when the order is keyed into the system clearly. In the end I changed my order to a Noodle with minced meat and mushroom served with spicy sauce after the manager could not assure me that my order can be served immediately.

To put in words, it tasted sour (like overnight food) as if it was done in haste and the portion was much smaller than the Wanton Mee. I called the manager and told her I would not pay the service charge for total dissatisfactory experience.

Really bad experience and will boycott this outlet. I would never had thought that renowned Crystal Jade, using a Point-of-Sale system, would actually omit my order and leave me waiting in disgruntlement.