Café Soho: Saturday, 2nd March 2002



It was Saturday night, and Decay decided that we'd go out for dinner, because we hadn't been to dinner with just ourselves for a while ... however, he wanted me to choose the place ... first choice was Airstream Cafe, but when we arrived, they were rather crowded, and it looked like a very long wait for a table ... so, after much walking around and figuring that pretty much all the restaurants in and around Century City Walk were at capacity, we decided to visit the place where we shared our first coffee together ... Café Soho ... the choice of music seemed to have changed since those days ... although this time around I couldn't really hear the music at all, for all the people everywhere ... gotta love Saturday night Twilight markets ...


We wandered in at around 7:45pm, sat down at table 11, and talked for a bit, I commented that the chairs here made me feel really short... Decay tells me that I am short ... after a short while, someone handed us the menu, which we perused for a bit ... after about 15-20 minutes or so, a waiter of some description took our order and we talked as we waited for our food... what we actually ordered to eat here is irrelevant, as you'll see by the following snapshots in time:

• 8:10 - Drinks arrive ... Decay sips on a coke of some description (the large size doesn't seem to exist), and I sip on a long machiato, after chucking some sugar into it... once the sugar dispenser decides to let me have some of the sugar ... it'd been sitting in semi-humid state for a bit too long ...


• 8.30 - Decay probably goes out for a smoke ... and tells me to order a Raspberry Spider if one of the waiters happens by, or if I can catch their eye... which ever seemed more likely ...


• 8:35 - Decay comes back from cancer stick break, and I haven't managed to catch anyone's eye, let alone a waiter's eye, and they haven't wandered over to place food on our table yet...


• 8:40 - our entree special (two samosas, two crumbed prawns, and two spring rolls, with tartare and plum dipping sauces) arrives ... we're pretty hungry at this point, and devour this arrival pretty damn quickly ... samosas hadn't been fried long enough - the pastry was still not all puffy ... Decay orders his Raspberry Spider, and it arrives while I'm still finishing the spring roll (third of three items... prawn, samosa, spring roll in that order) ...


• 9:00 - Decay goes out for another smoke, leaving instructions for me to order another coke for him, should I happen to be lucky enough to either catch a waiter's eye (seemingly as difficult as something that is very difficult... damn, picked up another habit ... something about hen's teeth may be appropriate here), or if our main meals might arrive, then to accost that waiter and ask for a coke...


• 9:05 - Decay returns from cigarette, I have had no luck in procuring the attentions of a waiter of any description ... we note that we probably would've been seated by now if we'd waited for a table at Airstream ... Decay is hungry type boy ... really wanting food to happen soon ...


• 9:20 - Pretty much fed up at this point ... we decide that if the food doesn't arrive by the time the queue at the cash register clears, we're getting up and paying for what little we've had, and giving up on getting any actual other food we had already ordered ...


• 9:25 - Get up, pay for what we've had, wonder if we should've done a runner instead ... girl at cash register seemed to react as if this non-arrival of food in a timely manner thing was a frequent occurence... apologises for our hassles though ...

In the end, we drove to Imperial Kingdom and ordered take-away from there instead... one of my friends was working the desk so we got to talk to her for a bit, and we got service with a smile! Yummy mongolian beef, chicken with cashew nuts and capsicum, and singapore fried noodles ... total wait time of 10-15 minutes in the foyer watching the Mr Burns lobster sit there and veg while this big fish (a perch of some sort? Red fish... I don't like eating it), trapped under a big lobster, was struggling to get itself out from underneath this lobster... fish got its eye gouged by a lobster foot for its efforts ... So, dinner out sort of didn't happen in the end ... don't think we could put up with going here again, even if for sentimental reasons ... just like I probably won't sit through Loser again ... I have better things to do with my time (:


Rating: Café Soho - 2/10, 1 for the apology, 1 for um... the coffee? Imperial Kingdom - 7/10, we had fast service, yummy food, and my friend works there (: