Jones the Grocer@Mandarin Gallery

I haven't blogged in a while and as you can see this is my "first" entry after deleting the rest of my posts and starting fresh AGAIN. But imagine going somewhere for lunch and as you sit there enjoying the disgustingly slow and painful service offered, you imagine your fingers dancing across the keyboard and the words pouring from your head, ranting and ranting about every single thing that went wrong- and I just had to blog about this.

I had to be at the Mandarin Gallery for a 3pm appointment and so my boyfriend and I decided to pop over to Jones the Grocer for a quick bite. It was about 2pm and the place was probably about 40% full and every table was more or less finishing up or just having an afternoon coffee. As you enter there is a sign that says "Please wait to be seated", the boyfriend said to just walk in but being a good law abiding girl I told my boyfriend that we will wait to be served. We stood there for a good 3 minutes with numerous staff running back and forth in front of us but neither offered to seat us. I gave up and eventually decided to seat us at a table of our preference. 

 

Upon sitting down, we had to request for menus and the service staff didn't even care to brief us about the soup of the day or any specials. When I did eventually stop a waiter to ask what the soup of the day was, he looked at me like he had somewhere else to be, blurted "Cream of Carrot" and left. When we were ready to order, I think we tried to stop 2 staff before the 3rd one stopped. Perhaps we should have been louder and less mousy? Then they will probably think we are being obnoxious...

We ordered the Wagyu Beef Pie and the Chicken and Mushroom Pie. Honestly the only saving grace of the meal was the fact that the pies were amazing and so was the cappuccino I had. Hunger and forgetfulness resulted in there NOT being any pictures of the food. The cappuccino was served with the perfect amount of froth and i loved the richness of the coffee. I do however wish there was a little more to the drink for the $6 price tag- its a 2 slurp cup. The pies are served without sauce but they were surprisingly moist on the inside. The beef pie was filled with meat (as opposed to meat pies filled with more potatoes than meat) and there was a perfect balance of flavors. I tasted some of my boyfriends Chicken and Mushroom pie and found it to be a little on the salty side. We both agreed that I got the better dish :)

Getting the bill was another hassle. When our dishes were cleared, we asked for the bill, and waited and waited AND WAITED. We saw the servers refilling water, getting menus, serving food...so we decided to be nice and give them a break. But at 2.57pm, we were pressed for time and asked the same waitress who we had ask initially, commenting that we've been waiting 10mins for the bill. It took her about 2minutes this time and we got an apology but throughout us trying to find enough $10's to pay, the waitress was fidgety and antsy.

To conclude, i'll probably try avoid going there again! It's the 3rd time I've been there and the other two times the place was full so it was excusable, but to go on a quiet day during a non peak period and still get such service is just not worth it. Time is money :)