The Green Room Cafe (已結業)

Where do I begin to describe the litany of mistakes and problems with this establishment? Seems to me to be an even bigger problem of mismanagement within the Green Room and its sister restaurants located just next to it in Bishan Park. Shame, when the food is actually not too bad.The wifey and I decided to grab an early dinner on a Wednesday evening, and we had in mind to try one of the Bishan park restaurants located in the heart of the newly spruced up gardens. Having been to the Canopy restaurant a number of years ago and remembering that the food was pretty decent, we ambled our way to the entrance to reacquaint ourselves with the menu. Only thing was, the menu on display at the entrance was not that of Canopy but of its sister restaurant the Green Room Cafe next door. After about ten minutes of waiting outside for service and a menu, and seeing that there were two staff members in the airconditioned comfort of the dining room happily chatting away with nary an intention to even come outside to inquire about our needs, we lost interest and started to walk towards other restaurants to explore. At this time the manager poked his head out and halfheartedly asked me if I wanted anything. Being slightly annoyed at the less than impressive reception, I mentioned something about the service standards, to which I saw his face noticeably flinch and contort into a grimace of annoyance. "I thought you were looking at something and going to another restaurant", was the magnitude of his powerful defence. Well duh! If I am standing outside your restaurant without even so much as a menu to help me along, can you blame me for wanting to spend my money elsewhere. A brilliant start.Obviously I wanted to go elsewhere, but health conscious wifey after staring at the Green Room's vegan and raw food menu for so long decided this was just the thing the doctor ordered to help detox and prepare her for the customary round of year end binge drinking and feasting activities. So inspite of my better judgement, I trotted after her as Mr Observant Manager led us to the Green Room to be seated.To be fair, the food sounded quite interesting, as we are both quite keen on vegan cuisine and occasionally enjoy the odd salad. The special "Guest Chef" insert on the menu caught my eye, as a supposedly acclaimed Japanese lady with impressive credentials from Le Cordon Bleu in Paris and Le Gavroche in London lent her skills to a set menu of Japanese infused dishes. I got the three course set, Wifey had the Nasi Campur.After taking our order, the Manager, who had to his credit calmed down slightly, promptly disappeared from the restaurant. No doubt to return to the Canopy to finish the conversation he was so deep in. We were served the first course, a japanese ratatouille slice of seasonal vegetables immersed in jelly. Slightly more appetizing than its description, I have to admit. I was reminded of a similar concept I tried in a fantastic restaurant in Tokyo, which could have been the source of inspiration for the dish. Unlike the ratatouille I had in Japan though, the dish was fairly one dimensional and the flavours rather clumsily put together, with the gelatinous casing falling to pieces as we tucked in.As I finished off the dish, I took a sip of water and realised that there was a dead ant floating listlessly in my glass. Now I know I was in for some raw cuisine but this was perhaps taking it too far! As I looked around for a waiter, all that greeted me was the proverbial chirping of crickets around Bishan park as dusk fell and the insects came out to play after a heavy rainstorm. There was no service staff in sight, inspite of all my frantic arm waving the place was deserted.When our mains arrived I notified the waitress of the "supplement" in my drink, to which she took one stoic look and without a single word of apology or appeasement walked off sour-faced to presumably replace the drink. On to the mains: mine was a surprisingly comforting plate of rice, vegetables and fried lotus root patties drenched in a slightly sweet-sour sauce the exact description of which eludes me. The taste and flavours were right for me, but the textures seemed somewhat lacking, as the patties were far from even "lightly fried" as the menu described. I had the horrible impression from my food thus far that the restaurant, including servers and kitchen, had simply packed up and left earlier and that the sole waitress attending to us was also simultaneously reheating what was earlier prepared by the chef in the microwave. As it turns out, there were two chefs at the kitchen counter busying themselves, but they both looked rather young and nowhere was the Guest Chef in sight, unless the picture on the menu looked incredibly different to the slight young girl I saw behind the kitchen counter. The Wifey's Nasi Campur was a sorry excuse of brown rice and limply boiled veggies which I would have hated to have eaten.After another lengthy wait between courses, we got my dessert of mochi strips in a vegan caramel (who knew melted sugar had a vegan option!) which was actually quite good, except that the mochi was too hard and cold (again images of pre-assembled and plonked into the fridge food float to my brain). Once we polished that off, we sat around waiting patiently for the waitress to come round and clear our table so we could simultaneously ask for the bill. As expected, no one came and after another 15 minutes, my patience at an end I calculated the exact amount we owed including service and taxes and set the money on the table and walked out. As any self respecting customer used to a minimum level of service will tell you I probably should not have paid for service which was non-existent, but the ever peace-loving Wifely not being one to make a scene convinced me otherwise. Given their track record of horrible service so far I was half betting on them rushing at us as we walked out of the restaurant to accuse us of not paying, but instead their track record of neglect held true instead and no one so much as batted an eyelid as we walked out.The drama was not about to end though. As we walked to the carpark grumbling about the experience we had, lo and behold someone we had not seen the entire time (probably because he worked at Canopy) came furiously running after us and asking us if we had forgotten to pay our bill in a condescending and accusatory tone. If he (or the restaurant staff) had been as dilligently waiting tables instead of chasing down customers for bills which were already paid they might have discovered the money sitting there. I told him as much.So a word of advice to unsuspecting customers, if you are in the market for a nice meal in Bishan park, avoid this and possibly all the other Aramsa run restaurants there! Which is a bit of a shame really, seeing as how the setting is rather nice and the food passably good. And a word of advice to management, please for heaven's sake get a proper service team to run it correctly. You have no business opening if you cannot cater to a single customer's needs, particularly so if that customer is the only one in your whole restaurant at the time during an off peak hour! 繼續閱讀

I discovered this place through the internet and was really excited that it was located at bishan park 2 which was so near to my school! (James Cook University). The place was lovely and the room (restaurant) was literally a light shade of green. Unfortunately, their menu did not consist of many items and appeared very health conscious to me. They did not serve soft drinks and only had fruit juices on their menu (most were a mixture of vegetables and fruits).We tried out their appetizer first (spring rolls). I could not even believe they were spring rolls. The skin was not cooked and the vegetables in them were literally raw. That was no dip for the spring rolls either. It tasted pretty horrible and we had to leave after one bite! I have definitely had better food! 繼續閱讀