Certainly wouldnt be gracing the doors of this cafe/restaurant again nor will we be recommending it to mates.

We saw the appetising glossy photos portaying fresh food & seemingly very reasonable prices on front glass window & decided to gave this cafe a try. With the exception of prices, nothing else was written in English.

So in we went, noticed big difference in prices between what was advertised in front window to actual menu pricing. Front-window prices were for LUNCH only. Bit hard to tell – when nothing is in English. Plates, Chopstickes were slapped onto our table with a thunk – waitress having a bad day.. We ordered the Pepper beef on sizzling plater (which was simply YUM) & my International student ordered Lemon chicken. From there things went rapidly down-hill. The Lemon chicken was nothing like we’ve seen or eaten in nz asian restaurants before. Miserable skinny bits off chicken heavily battered in egg batter with a very thick gooey lemon sauce sitting on bottom of plate & skinny chicken on top. Nothing was tossed though. It was grab a chicken & swirl through the sauce! We could taste the egg batter & old chicken… so we called over the “lively waittress & requested she taste the dish & please explain why it tasted so foul. She refused to taste the dish. We then asked for the manager & also to order a new item.

The waitress went away loudly muttering. The male asian manager’s attitude blew us away. He approached our table & said: “I will refund your money, you get out of my restaurant!” We were absolutely gobsmacked as our complaint was only about an un-edible dish & we were more then willing to share with the waitress so she could tell us what was wrong. She refused to eat the meat, makes one wonder WHY??

Long story short – we didnt stay, the evening was ruined.. the look on my International student’s face hungry after a long day at Uni. only to receive this kind of pathetic customer service. A good manager would have at least offered either (1) An apology, (2) return the dish to kitchen OR get a discount on the ruined meal. Sadly none of the above happened. When we asked to doggy-bag for the sizzling platter, the cotainer was brought & thrown on our table.. This cafe/restaurant needs to pull up its socks in Customer Service if it wants to survive in a very popular domain of restaurants in Balmoral/Mt. Eden area.