Second Chance At The Gardens Cafe

Remember my earlier post about my not-so nice lunch experience over at the Gardens Lifestyle Store & Cafe at Mid Valley? On Friday, I met up with the chain's A&P manager over lunch to discuss about my experience and for me to get the refund over the over-charging the cafe staff made earlier.

The A&P Manager is a really nice lady and we had a nice chat. It was rather funny when she remarked that she thought I was from the press because I was toting my Sony NEX camera with the 18-55mm lens attached to the body. Small camera, big lens.  No, I'm not from the press. I'm a blogger. XD

Drinks - Watermelon juice and Honey Ice Lemon Tea. Complaining sure can be a thirsty business! LOL

My light lunch - Classic Caesar Salad with Smoked Salmon. I like this a lot, much better than my steak that I had earlier. Totally recommend it if you like smoked salmon. Great dish to start a meal with.

Gong Bao Chicken with Shanghai Noodle

For dessert, I enjoyed a really coconutty "Coconut Galore". It sure been ages since I last eaten coconut flavoured ice cream! It's served in a coconut shell. Nice on the eyes, but can be tricky to eat especially when you want to scoop out the ice cream.

A really sour Green apple sorbet, served in a green apple. I think I would love this because I do like sour things but I needed to finish my coconut ice cream! They have lemon sorbet served in lemon skin & pineapple sorbet served in pineapple casing too! A feast to the eyes as well to the palate.

They also have a selection of cakes, sold at RM8.90 per piece. I had the chance to try all the cakes offered in the menu, and I took them back to the office for my department people to have a taste. Everyone swarmed at the cakes, I only managed to get a decent shot of just one slice out of the 10 I took back!

So  how was my second experience at the Garden Lifestyle Store and Cafe? First, I give a whole lot of credit to Rain, the very nice, very friendly A&P manager for he damage control efforts. It was really good talking to her.

But even with her having lunch at the cafe, service was still a tad too slow for my liking. I got my salad early but it took some time for the rest of the order to arrive, even the sorbets took  too long to arrive. When a simple lunch dragged until 2.20pm because we were waiting for the food, it didn't show an efficient service.

There was significantly more staff around this time than during my previous visit, which is good to see especially since the outlet is doing such a brisk business. Some people have time to enjoy a leisurely time, I guess. The staff that attended my table on Wednesday were so obviously avoiding our table this time around. (You don't think I'd fail to notice that, do you?) I would've thought an apology by the supervisor whom I dealt with on Wednesday to be around offering apologies but  only the manager (who was on leave that Wednesday) came to our table. Oh well... maybe I was expecting too much.

Anyway, chatting with Rain over lunch was nice. She mentioned about their upcoming Mother & Father's Day promotion - diners spending RM150 there would get RM50 cash voucher (you have to confirm this, Rain) and remember that piano in my photo? The cafes will have song dedications on those two special days. You can ask the piano player to play your parents' favourite song! That does sounds nice, doesn't it?

I don't mind eating at this chain again but maybe if I do decide to have a meal there, I'd choose a less hectic outlet. They do have a few other outlets; at One U, The Curve, Sunway Pyramid, Alamanda & Viva Home. And I want to try the char koay teow that Rain highly recommended! She said it tastes just like one you would find at Penang hawkers!

I think the one at Alamanda, Putrajaya would be much quieter. Maybe a Mother's day dinner there for me with a song dedicated to me while we eat dinner?*hint hint to hubby* ^^

But I don't see any review of the outlet over at Alamanda yet. We should rectify that. Anyone buying me a meal there? Anyone? XD