Chillipadi is a Malaysian restaurant serving students and inner city workers. It is hidden in a laneway in Melbourne Central.
My bill which came out to $16. How expensive is that, considering I got inferior quality and not much service.
Promotional poster
Where is this year's cheap eats sign? Have they all decided to become very expensive?
Here they are open all hours for students.
The food here is not exactly cheap and some of the meals are not good value for money. They do have a 25% off the total bill discount in the Entertainment book, however I forgot to bring it.
But I do like the display on the counter and the quiet ambiance. The place was not too packed. I could not understand why the waitress got some of the orders wrong. She got wrong two tables orders and it took ages to get her attention when I wanted to order. She was running around, looking flustered like a mad chook. She was knowledgeable and tried to sell me the beef rendang.
The bathrooms are around the corner from the restaurant next to Mee too. I think that Chillipadi are trying to save some money on rent by not putting the bathrooms inside their restaurant. I would have liked to see bathrooms inside the restaurant.
I had the $16 lunch special. Sorry I forgot to take pictures of the food. It included one entree, one main and one drink.
For entree I had the seafood gyoza. Here it was more like for soup and not pan fried like they said it should be. They used the wonton skin instead of the thick gyoza skin. Not much seafood in there.
The lemonade was a bit meh. I would have liked to have a fresh lemon in it to make it a bit more presentable.
On to the mains. The mains was a terriyaki chicken dish with nori, cucumber and rice. This was more like a soya sauce chicken. I expected a bigger and much better main for the price I paid. The chicken was dry and tough in some areas. The rice was placed under the chicken and the nori. I expected the rice to be placed in a separate place like some other dishes.
The sauce overpowered the dish a bit. So much that the rice was really soggy. The sauce was right though.
The nori and the cucumber were lovely though.
Upon payment the service staff asked me whether or not I enjoyed the meal. Just to be polite I said yes, sacarstically. But it's INFURIATING AND IRRITATING when they ask their customers. We would tell you if we enjoyed the meal, instead of you asking us. What else can I say besides yes, I enjoyed the meal.
Sadly I would not return unless their service and food improves. A tip to them, next time when someone comes to the counter and pays don't ask them if they enjoyed the meal. They will tell you if they have. AND SMILE FOR GOODNESS SAKES!!!
Hi Sally, I'm sorry you didn't have a good experience. We certainly appreciate good feeback and will try to address the negative ones.
ReplyDeleteOur $16 deal is 2 courses with a glass of wine and is very popular with the corporates. Unfortunately you ordered the soft drink instead and hence wasn't as much added value in your case. We aslo hire F&B consultants from hotel groups to train the front of house and we were taught to add a slice of lemon to Lemon and Bitters as well as minireal water to distinguish it from lemonade.
As with the gyoza, we do boil/steam it first and fry when the water evaporates. I have relayed the "dry meat and too much overflavoured sauce" comment to the kitchen and they will look into it.
With regards to the offsite toilets, its a Centre design as they have given all the tenants very narrow width to work with and all the resteraunts and cafes in that laneway share a common toilet for which we are charges utilities.
Last year Center Management conducted 2 seperate Mystery Diners survey and although we fared very well but points were deducted because we fail to enquire about the meal or engage with the customer and did not farewell our guests. I totally agree with you wrong order is highly undesirable and the staff do need to smile a lot more. :)
Chillipadi is Student Friendly and over the past 7 years have helped sponsor and catered for many many clubs and Uni events and Student movie making programs.In fact this year we have MUOSS conduct 2 orientation food crawl and Chillipadi was in the top 2. In July we catered for MASCA and tonight we are catering for 100 pax for the Singapore Student's Society.
We were hesitant in responding to your blogg but management feels that since we are student centric, we do need to address area we fall short and explain issues where we feel you may not have a correct undestanding.
In view of this we are appealing to you to review your blogg and you are most welcome to discuss further for a better representation.
Regards
Li
Chillipadi Group Head of Operations
maybe but if you have a look at urbanspoon.com and search your restaurant you'll see that some of the others say the same thing
ReplyDeleteAll my experiences with chillipadi food has been great, just find it interesting that you decided to go with a more japanese inspired meal when they are a predominantly malaysian restaurant.
ReplyDeleteYeah but u should see that on urbanspoon theses quite a few people that hated this chillipadi. Im willing to give the one in flemington road a try though.
ReplyDelete