A good comeback!

After the last experience that G and I had with the 2 vouchers that we used, we were a bit apprehensive to try the last one!

This week I got an email from the company that is selling the vouchers stating that the restaurant would be closing on the 27^th July 2011 and that if we wanted to use our vouchers we should go before that date!  I phoned and booked!

We were a little nervous going but thought it is worth a try, WELL this one made up for the other two...

The voucher was for 2 curries.  We looked at the wine menu and they had our favourite wine, we have only been to 2 restaurants that have had this wine (this restaurant included!), this was a good start.

We were asked if we wanted any starters but being a little bit apprehensive we declined and just ordered our 2 chicken curries.  Our curries arrived within 10 minutes of ordering them and they were delicious!  They were served with a sambal, rice, what tasted like homemade chutney and a poppadom – delicious!

We saw these good looking spring rolls go past our table and decided to do things a little differently – main course then starters J  We ordered the starter spring rolls and I have never ever eaten spring rolls like this before and believe me I have had plenty of spring rolls in my life time including homemade one’s but I have never had one as good as this one!  The difference is that they put some delicious sweet sauce INSIDE the spring roll - simply delicious and as if the sauce inside the spring roll isn't enough they serve it with a delicious thick sweet and sour sauce, yummilicious!

We even finished off with creme brulee, chocolate truffles and coffees.

It was a all round good experience and we are now considering not to just delete the next food voucher that pop's into our inbox!

Till next time!
L

WARNING! This post will contain some venting!

When G and myself were on honeymoon we had to eat out for every meal, we said that when we get back to Cape Town we would start trying new restaurants, we kinda fell into a restaurant slump where we always landed up going to the same place!

Not long after we got home I got an email from a friend inviting me to join this website, every day they have a special offer sometimes it will be 50% off a back massage other days 60% off a meal at a restaurant.
Now G and myself are not usually the type of people to sign up for things like that but we thought it would be a good opportunity to try new restaurants at a discount rate.

The idea… buy some vouchers, try out the restaurant at a discount rate if we like the place and the food then go back!

So far we have bought 3 vouchers, we have used 2 of the 3 and this has been our experience so far:

First place:

Order any 2 pizza for R59 worth R138
We love pizza and the ad said that it was an Indian restaurant and you have apparently not eaten pizza till you’ve eaten an Indian pizza!
We arrive and the place has music so loud that we could barely hear ourselves think, anyway I guess you can still kind of look past that.
We ordered our drinks which arrived in a decent amount of time, we then told the waiter that we had a voucher and asked if there was anything we couldn’t order – big mistake!  We felt that we should never have told our waiter that we had a voucher – we waited for about an hour for our pizza’s and not because they were busy but because we were obviously not first priority.  Our pizza’s arrived just in time before we passed out from hunger, we started digging in only find what tasted like processed cheese L
We got the impression that because we had a voucher we had to wait forever for our food encouraging us to drink more and that they used the cheapest ingredients. Very disappointing – we will most definitely not go back!

Second Place:
31 piece Sushi platter for R130
When I phoned to make a reservation they asked me if I was coming with a voucher, which I was a little disappointed with because we decided after our last experience that we would not tell the next place we had a voucher until we paid.
It was a lovely restaurant, we ordered our drinks they arrived quickly and were ice ice cold, perfect!
The atmosphere was lovely, we already decided we would be back!
We looked at the menu and decided that if we were still hungry after our 31 piece platter we would order an extra salmon platter, it looked delicious and had 8 salmon roses on, yummy!
They obviously knew we had the voucher because they marked it next to our reservation, we gave out waiter the voucher and waited for our food!
We waited an hour and half for our platter!!
Once again not because they were run off their feet busy!  There was a table that arrived 25 minutes after we ordered our platter and they got their food before us.  We could see the sushi chefs from where we were sitting and we had to wait and watch them standing around doing nothing while we waited for our food!
I don’t mind waiting for my food if a restaurant is super busy but an hour and a half is unacceptable especially when you know they are not!
When our platter did arrive the pieces of sushi were tiny and filled with rice!  So they put avo on the one side and then a tiny piece of salmon and then rice to fill it – shocking I tell you!
Needless to say we did not order the second platter, we could not afford waiting another hour and a half only to receive a plate of rice with a few pieces of salmon and some avo! – NO THANKS!

I do not understand why these restaurants take apart with this website if they are not going to treat you like normal paying customers!  I think it is rather short sighted on their part because not only did the second place lose out on us ordering more they have also lost us as customers because we will never go back!

I feel like we have been duped and that makes me angry!  Angry with the website selling the vouchers, angry with the restaurants for being short sighted and angry with myself for falling for it!

We still have one more voucher to go, let’s see how this one goes!

If you are still reading this, thanks for listening to my moaning I feel better already!

Till next time!
L