Ben's

I'm a lost touched city women towards these happening cafe/restaurant. I find it mere marketing gimmick and not worth the money (Ok-lah, I'm getting old ==). Other reason is as a parent, you will slowly stay away from this lifestyle-happening-not value for money restaurant, which means you tend to be more practical on spending for the children sake.

So what am I trying to say? well the story goes like this.

I planned a birthday dinner and my city friends told me about this happening place name Ben's. A food chain restaurant run by former Delicious boss etc. As Delicious was somehow a good place to hangout and dinning, I opted Ben's located in Publika.

I called up for a reservation however booking was full, the Assistant Manager ask me to walk in instead which would required to wait for like 30 mins or so. Well, I proposed Marmalade but my city women friends prefer to Ben's, and for all you know, Marmalade is another food chain restaurant has this theme in yellow but do not accept booking, anyways it was closed for a private function. What? private function on Saturday? Are restaurant owner made so well to forgo business on Saturday? Oh Well.

To avoid waiting too long, me and TT went early to queue. We dressed up for Party (me and TT) happily walked into Bens. It was 7pm. Restaurant was full house, holy cow! We were late for the dinner, there were already a handfull of families in the queue, it appeared to me everyone was on the waiting list. So I get TT to wait at the line and I walked into restaurant to look for someone to put our name in the list. Everyone was busy, some even just try to ignore my eye contact!! I got someone finally to attend to me, came from back restaurant, look like he just seated a guest.

"Please queue up!!" He is an Indian in ethnic, dress in jeans and some color shirts, . He shouted at me and try to push me to the queue whilst taking down the table orders, I find it annoying. Then I realize everyone was awaiting for queue number!!

Well, since TT was in queue I took sometime to look at the cakes displayed at the cold storage.

" Please go to queue, miss!!" . The same Indian guy shouted at me again!! Well I was quite "Paiseh" (embarassed) over the shout made direct to me publicly, I find him rude and quite upset but I didn't want to take it personally to jeopardise my BIG DAY! What the hell if I would queue later? It doesn't hurt right?

The dinner went ok, food was satisfactory, something fusion  - I ordered a softshell crab in Pita Bread, it taste fusions ha. I guess this is the selling point - something extraordinary to offer than boring fix cuisine based menu.

So how do  I find overall services rendered? The food served pretty promptly, we didn't have to starve even there were over crowded orders, except it was pretty warm sitting there when the air-conditioner was on. I looked out from the restaurant, holy shit, the restaurant was really packed inside out!!.

Firstly I hardly hangout on weekend, I find it crowded especially places in down town (another sign of getting old==). Secondly I hardly spend on food like this, did I tell you I pledged for home cook? Oh well. I'm a person don't like eating out because I'm quite sicked of exotic cruisine and menu basically similar everywhere (Sounds like I've been to many expensive restaurants huh). Having said that hanging out once in a while is fun and good, with good companies of course.

If you ask me, I would prefer to "Porto Romano" or "Marmalade" or "Aliyaa", places less crowded where you could enjoy the ambiences and scrumptious food and great company!

I don't want to share "Porto Romano" as it might gets crowded one day (I'm not saying I carry such influence power, but I believed if you find it good, so does others, I'm a little selfish, blah). Anyway good stuff is meant to be shared, this place is really worth going.

Porto Romano served scrumptious food, price more or less as compared to Ben's. It's mid-level fine dinning restaurant but less crowd, sounds like a good deal. You can really enjoy quiet dining and company within. I guess, the positioning is bit differed from Ben's as the latter targetting hopping-to-be-seen young generation (ok, fine, don't reminder....old ==). So you can choose embience you would prefer to. 

Nonetheless, I celebrated my birthday at Ben's. Thank you, gals^^.