Today my colleagues and I (all 20 of us) went to the San Fran Steakhouse at Damansara Intan to celebrate a colleague's birthday. As there were so many of us, one of my colleagues took the liberty of pre-booking our lunch (which was from the set menu - Wed is either chicken pasta or lamb) so that we wouldn't have to wait too long when we got there. At the same time, we were advised that they will also arrange the drinks for all, which would be cheaper than if we ordered drinks individually.
The set lunch there sounds reasonable at RM13.90++ per head for main course and 2 out of 3 of salad, soup and/or dessert. Ok, so there were 20 of us in one long table and definitely we would ask the waiter what the soup of the days was, what was for dessert, etc. However, the waiter seemed very very annoyed that we kept asking him the same questions as he took our orders and by the time he got to my end of the table his annoyance was really showing through. He rolled his eyes when asked what the soup of the day was and snarled out "Tomato". I initially ordered the salad and dessert combination but then when he mentioned that the dessert was ice cream, I asked him to changed my combination to soup and salad. He proceeded to give me dirty look for that!
I guess that was a prelude of things to come.
Drinks were served in little tiny 'wine' style glasses - a fruit punch I suspect which wasn't too bad if there wasn't so much ice.
Tomato soup was bland - a result of over diluting of the concentrate probably and lukewarm in temperature.
Oh .. the rolls were pretty nice, served piping hot.
Salad was pretty non descript, some lettuce leaves thrown together with a piece of tomato, cucumber and purple cabbage for some colour.
We waited at least 40 minutes for the main courses to arrive, even after pre-booking. The lamb was so tough that my hand ache after cutting it. The rosemary rice that accompanied it was bland and tastless (though it didn't smell too bad) and the vegetables that came with it was quite wilted and dead though that probably had the most flavour of all.
For my poor colleagues who opted for the Chicken pasta, what they ended up getting was a small plate of fettucini carbonara which was completely tastless and bland and slices of the driest looking chicken I've seen in the longest time.
As for dessert, which I'm glad I didn't order, it was a scoop of vanilla ice cream with mint sauce. One colleague remarked that the mint sauce should have accompanied the lamb earlier, not as dessert. I took a peek and saw that they used mint sauce which would normally accompany lamb, as in, there were bits and pieces of dried mint leaves in them.
To top it all of, when we were presented with the bill, we found out that the drinks cost us RM50 per jar (same size as the beer jug) and that we had consumed 7 jugs! So, inclusive of tax, that meant that we consumed about RM280 worth of food and RM350 worth of fruit punch and I don’t think we even consumed the equivalent of one full normal sized glass either! We were a bit taken aback because earlier we were informed that ordering the drinks by the jug would cost us much less than ordering a la carte. Turns out, if we had ordered our drinks separately, it would have only set us back RM10-12 per head, and not around RM17! What a rip off!!
So, if you're in the market for lousy service, tasteless food and in the mood to get rip off, head to San Francisco Steakhouse now!
