I've been here for a while now, and it's about time that I checked out what they hype is about.
Experience wise, it certainly wasn't anything like the pleasantness that fellow Openrice commenters have mentioned.
There was no queue when I came here at around afternoon tea time on a weekday. I was here over the weekend and the queue extended all the way to Aberdeen Street at lunchtime. It's a serious queue compared with its beef brisket noodle rival across the road.
I stopped and tried to find somewhere to sit. The all-female staff weren't helpful and just asked me to find a seat on my own. I asked around at all the vacant seats and apparently all of them were either taken up by imaginary people, or people who are too selfish to put their precious Gucci or LV bags on their laps (sucks to be me for bringing an old rucksack to the place). Eventually I found one near the kitchen exit and tried to made myself comfortable there. I tried to, of course, because the staff were dishing out plates of toasted buns right behind me.
I asked for my order to be taken three or four times, and I usually asked a staff member straight after another order has been taken at a neighbouring table. They always asked me to wait in a rather firm but "I don't really care" tone. One told me to find another staff member because "I don't take orders". I've heard of that bureaucratic speak before, but who cares? It's a good time to learn how to multi-task. Eventually the lady in the kitchen (the in-charge, I suppose?) reminded her staff to not just take care of the takeaway orders, but also take down the eat-in orders, and it was then that I was served.
To their credit the food came out nice and quickly. I started wolfing down the beef and tomato noodles almost as soon as I put the bowl on the table and had the chopsticks handed to me. About halfway through the noodles, a member of staff brought another bowl of beef and tomato noodles out, saying that this bowl - the bowl in her hands - was for me. Alright, then whose noodles am I eating? It's not as though the noodles are named, if you can't serve quickly and to the correct table, maybe it pays to read the order properly. I couldn't care less about their mix-up and continued to wolf my noodles down.
As I paid for my bowl of noodles to a member of staff, the lady in the in-charge said to the other staff, "Don't let anymore people sit outside the kitchen entrance!" I guess she was implying that I was getting in the way of their business. In that case, shouldn't you have left these places empty, rather than having chairs next to the table? And shouldn't the staff be more active in organising people where to sit, rather than a free for all and letting people find their own way? What an organisational mess.
OK, service rant over. Food wise, this place is mediocre.
The tomato soup base itself isn't that chunky - the chunkiness comes in when you mix your pasta or noodles up with the generous splodge of tomato (probably a half-half mix of canned tomatoes and fresh ones, although I have to say I haven't seen a single fresh tomato on the premises) plus puree. From the flakes of dried spring onion floating in the soup, I can see that the noodles were made with some of the noodles' original flavouring sachets. One would really wonder why they need to put more flavouring in, if the tomato soup base was really that delicious.
Despite my smell impediment I could smell the aroma of buns being toasted on the premises, which is great, but nothing overly special. Toast a few slices of bread with a toaster in your own home and you'll get the same effect.
The ambience is raw. Nothing against it, but definitely a sense of nostalgia as some of us used to sit under sheets of tarpaulin and eat under foldable circular wooden tables and chairs. Definitely a tai pai dong feel to it, and definitely not a crowd attractor come the rainy season.
Given the experience I had with the staff, that alone doesn't deserve an unhappy face. I'll judge them on their food, and to be perfectly honest, this joint is grossly overhyped and overrated. There are a few places which are just as rough, and the staff are just as cocky, but at least their service is snappy and generally faultless.
Lesson of the day: It's not worth queuing up at this joint. Take half a day off from work and come here before or after lunch on a weekday, and you won't have to wait. I'll leave you to decide whether this place is your cup of tea or not - it certainly isn't on my end.
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