So I tend to be more complimentary than to be critical when it comes to writing in the blog, but once in a while- once in a very rare while- I find myself writing about places that seem, shall we say, underwhelming, and which, perhaps, I think, could do with more.
I don't think it's the primary fault of the place.
It's just how life is, how business works, and how there're times when you try to give as much as you can but someone else just happens to be giving more.
I can't say I didn't have a very good time here at this place on Smith Street.
There have been worse.
But it does get a wee bit disappointing when it is a dinner that you've skipped lunch for, and after that, at table, after you've placed your orders, find yourself served with food that feels somewhat underwhelming.
Was it that what it is, or was it that our expectations had been raised?
We've had Chinese-style grilled marinated meats at other places before. At those places we're selective with our orders, choosing the kind of meats that we like (namely lamb and beef) that have been marinated with a variety of spices that grant us a host of different flavors.
With such experiences, we had come here thinking, expecting that we'd have the same experience, but in a buffet, value-for-cost kind of way.
But, well, there were as many misses as there were hits.
And I'm wondering if it's because we had set too high a benchmark to compare.
See, it wasn't that there was lack of variety.
Neither was it that the food was bad.
But, short of hot, tasty-looking, glistening, smoke-scented meats to come to our table, the ones that arrived seemed harder and tougher than we had hoped for.
What's more, because the staff brought out all our orders at one go at the same time, (or maybe because we were sitting under the aircon), some of our skewers got cold by the time we worked through the plate to the end of the pile.
It might have been just us.
The table next had a tower of beer plus soju plus makgeolli plus two dishes, and they seemed to do just fine.
I don't have a picture of the skewers.
I also don't have a picture of the drinks.
But whilst I do regret taking a too blur picture of the skewers, I don't regret not having a memory of the drinks.
It's good and fine to offer blueberry juice, orange juice and fruit punch from a dispenser.
It's not so good to have them heavily watered down.
That glass of watered down blueberry juice was, by far, the most eyebrow-raising part of the entire meal.
You can say it might be a tad too much to expect dessert included, but to have dispenser drinks taste bland and weak almost as if it were dishwater is, really, completely, not acceptable.
Not even for a budgeted buffet price.
I wish they could have offered better, stronger, sweeter drinks.
Coke, Sprite, Fanta Grape, Iced Lemon Tea, standard soft drinks, anything that would complement the satay, which, I will say I liked better than the skewers.
These were good.
This evening our order consisted of what I think was likely beef, or mutton.
Then again it might have been some other meats- chicken, pork?- that I happily ate up, and which now have forgotten.
The one thing I do remember, however, is that we didn't use much of the dipping sauce.
Being local we've come to expect the satay peanut sauce to be thick, creamy, full of finely chopped peanuts swimming about inside.
This one, I'm afraid, reminded us too much of the hotpot kind.
Glad I was that the hotpot peanut sauce didn't detract from the smoky, slightly burnt taste of the meat. It didn't make a difference.
In fact, if even a little hard, I thought the satays had been done quite well.
We finished off the meal with a plate of dumplings that my friend had seen on the menu and wanted to try.
Simple as they might seem, they made a great addition to the meal, I have to say, and gave our dinner a light presence of carbohydrates which had, up to then, been not there.
It's not that one live live die die needs carbs to make a meal.
But chewing a nice, thick, dumpling skin wrapped over a ball of soft, tasty meat and chopped green chives the way the Northeasterners do it really will make the dinner feel more solid, more comforting, more warm, more full.
