Mr Moshe Shek, your cafe sucks

Dear Moshe Shek,

Congratulations. You’ve scaled up your business and you’re going places! One was rather glad that you opened up a café closer to central Mumbai in Palladium, given the rising fuel prices. Even though there’s a long haphazard queue to get a table – make that a mob – we are okay to wait 15 minutes for a table because the familiar wine coloured logo promises good food. But I was in for a rude shock, which completely ruined my mood.

 

To begin with, the waiter taking our order was distracted. We asked for a Smoked Salmon Bagel, Chargrilled Chicken Sandwich with brown bread and two drinks. One drink arrived within 120 seconds, which in hindsight was probably meant for some other table because such efficiency from the Palladium outlet is just not possible. After a 20 minute wait, a sandwich arrives. Guess what? It’s the Smoked Salmon “Sandwich” in brown bread. After insisting that it’s not what we asked for, the waiter takes it back, but no, there is no apology. Of course, isn’t he doing us a grand favour by providing us with food? How dare we complain!

 

The roasted chicken sandwich arrives in a sesame crusted bread which was white but the waiter insisted that it was brown bread and we decided to stick with it out of the fear of starvation. Ten minutes later, the waiter comes to ask us what exactly did we want for drinks.

 

The bagel arrives. Let me describe this Bagel to you Moshe, because you might want to know. The bagel is soft, I kid you not, it is s o f t. While this would be a delightful thing if I ordered a bun, but I wanted a bagel and this soft bun, my limited culinary knowledge tells me, cannot be it. Naturally, I called out to your manager who said that he’d rather I speak with the chef because he couldn’t figure what we wanted. The chef arrived and insisted that the tripe we were served was a bagel. We peel out the crust to demonstrate my point– well now, I hope you agree with me when I say that a bagel’s crust can’t peel easily. “Ma’am it’s a bagel only,” I am told. So then, we go into the recipe of the bagel and why the bun is not it.

 

“I have eaten better bagels at Moshe’s and this is not a bagel. It is a plain bread shaped like a bagel,” which was followed by the description of the crusty, chewy bagel I have indulged in at your Cuffe Parade restaurant.

 

The chef sheepishly offered to get me something else, but my lunch was ruined and I declined. “Please just take this back,” I told him.

 

We asked for the check and guess what? We were charged for the bagel. Yes, your team charged us for a dish we didn’t like and a dish we sent back and the manager was unapologetic about it. “I will have to confirm with the chef whether the Bagel was indeed not up to the mark,” your manager told us, without so much as an apology.

Well, thanks. I feel grand as a customer. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t like the dish, but my dislike had to be qualified by the chef. It doesn’t matter that the customer is a well-informed foodie who knows the difference between the real deal and the bagel that lay on my plate. It shouldn’t matter. If a certain dish is not to the liking of the customer, for a valid reason of course, the customer should have the right to send it back. And if the customer has had a chat with the chef and the chef has offered to replace the dish, it is completely outrageous that you charge the customer for the rejected dish.

 

I lost the will to try at this point. My lunch and my mood were ruined, I thought I’d rather pay the money, but I filled out a feedback form which I am sure will not reach you. My article might just. I came there to review the place, but I won’t bother for two reasons.

 

a. Irrespective of my review, people will continue to waltz in and going by the exceptional service (I hope you catch the sarcasm there!) they are likely to receive, word of mouth is already out there.

 

b. A café/restaurant that doesn’t honour the fact that a patron did not like what was served and doesn’t offer to at least, take the item off the bill doesn’t deserve to be critiqued because it stands for an unhealthy environment in my opinion – one where the customer is not shown a minimum courtesy.

 

But yes, I am writing this because I am not the only one who was treated this way. Two other individuals (one of them a dear friend) have been charged for food that they sent back at your restaurant. And I feel sad that after creating a warm, enjoyable dining experience in your Cuffe Parade outlet, and taking such tall steps towards opening new outlets, you are getting the basics wrong – so horribly wrong. For a place that is essentially a random lobby in the mall, where people on the 1st level can stare into my food, it is obvious that there is no ambience on offer, but with an average cost of a meal for two around Rs1200, one would expect decent service and exceptional food. Without any of that on offer, the café fails on every single count. And there is absolutely no need for me to come back. And I apologise to my readers as I say this – another restaurant bites the dust.

 

PS: As we walked away, there were at least 20 other people waiting to take that table. Does this send out a message that irrespective of the quality of food, ambience and service, if you have a key location you will do good business? I sincerely hope not.

 

DNA was there anonymously and we paid for our own food.