I'm boycotting Muthu's Curry @Dempsey Hill

Last Saturday, my other half and I went for lunch at Muthu's Curry @Dempsey Hill. We were in a celebratory mood (Joseph Schooling won our first Olympic Gold in record time, and forcing 3 of the world's swimming greats to share the silver medal podium. Majulah Singapura!).

We ordered our usual. Drinks, an appetiser and main dishes.
The drinks and the mains came promptly as usual.
We were almost done with the food.
The appetiser was still no where in sight.
This was some 20 minutes into our meal.

I called the waiter.

"Hi, can you please check on our appetiser. If the chef had not prepared it, we would like to cancel."

I know, I should have just requested they simply cancel the order.
We were in a celebratory mood, remember? So I thought I should be fair to them.
In any case, they are usually very reasonable.

We continued with our meal.
Ten minutes in, no appetiser in sight.
I thought, ok good, the order was cancelled.


More than fifteen minutes later, the waiter came out with the appetiser.

I asked him point blank.

"You DID NOT cancel our order, did you?"

He had a sheepish grin on his face. I repeated my question.

He said "The kitchen had already prepared it. They just needed to fry".

I said, "It took the kitchen more than FIFTEEN minutes to fry?"
 
This is the same appetiser that would have been served within 5 minutes from order placement, typically.

Fine. The food had been served. No point arguing.
So, we requested for them to pack the appetiser instead. We really could eat no more. And we proceeded to the cashier to pay.

Now, this was where it got interesting.

The bill had 2 accompanying order chits.
The first order chit indicated no order of the appetiser.
The second order chit had only one order - the appetiser.

Time indicated on the second order chit was more than 20 minutes after the time indicated on the first order chit. Isn't this all too coincidental?

Any idiot one could clearly come to the conclusion that the waiter had NOT placed our order in the first place and subsequently placed one AFTER I had asked, possibly to make up for his earlier omission. Sneaky bugger!

So, of course, I alerted the cashier, who, I think, was also the manager (because he was wearing a different uniform and had an air of misplaced confidence about him).

He countered by saying it was a running order. No mistake had been made.


I explained to him what happened. Again. This time in chronological order.


He rang the till nonetheless.

I signed the bill and walked off. Furious.

I tried to walk it off, knowing that I might regret how I reacted when I was angry. We went to a nearby coffee joint.

But I continued to feel terrible. In fact, I felt sick to my stomach.
I felt terrible that I had allowed myself to be lied to. In my face. Blatant lies!


So, I walked back to the restaurant.
Placed the pack of appetiser on the cashier counter and told the cashier/manager that I could not eat this pack of blatant lies, I didn't need a refund and they had just lost us as customers.

The manager looked stunned. He didn't know what to say then. When he realised what happened, he asked one of his waiters (not the one who served us) to go after me.

But guess what the waiter said? "Ma'am, come back, we want to refund you."


No apologies. Just a crude offer of cash.  

Seriously, not everything is about the money.

So, no more Muthu's Curry @Dempsey Hill for me.