What is that saying about the best laid plans? I wish I could remember, because it is quite appropriate with regards to Temasek Restaurant in Parramatta.
Mother's Day was fast looming and it was important to find the right place to eat. I am blessed with two daughters who love their food, love to cook and also love to try new restaurants. My youngest daughter and I are both lucky to have partners who don't care where they eat so long as there is lots of food. This works well for the five of us, as we all get to indulge our passions without anyone missing out. The final blessing is a 20 month old, who is charming, funny and incredibly good when it comes to dining out.
With all this in mind and my favourite yum cha place scratched off the list (too far, too often, too much the ordinary sunday feast) I searched through reviews online until I found a place that was closer for us all and had the added of bonus of being in the SMH good food guide 2009. In fact it could well have been in the guide for the last umpteen years from all the hype I read about it.
Sometimes I turn my intuitive ear off when making restaurant plans - this time I should have made sure it was switched on. The place was fully booked, but the helpful gent at the end of the phone said he could squeeze our party in for the first of the lunch sittings only trick was we had to turn up at 11am to ensure we could finish our meal before we would get turfed out.
With a tot in tow I was not pertubed by an early end to lunch. Finishing lunch at 1.30 was quite enticing too because this would be one of the first Sundays Happy and I have not been at the markets for nearly a year.
My girls, dutifully warned, and obsessively obedient turned up 10 minutes after we arrived to secure our table, this a full fifteen minutes before the requested 11am. Imagine our surprise when the staff at the restaurant this day are adament that there will be no food serving before 11.30am. The restaurant wouldn't even be ready for us until close to 11.30. After cooling our heels literally in the alley way for over half an hour, we were lucky to have them rustle up a table and seat us just before 11.30. The day was taking a nose dive south, and we were all starting to wonder if the meal would live up to expectations.
Navigating the menu, my eldest daughter and I couldn't find any of the dishes we had read about in the reviews. This is not surprising as the menu was set out in order of sauce, rather than by meat. We'd remembered calamari as one of the must haves, but had no idea what sauce it was with. Ordering took us to a new level of difficulty.
We'd also ordered two crabs, yet the staff were undecided if we could have each of these $90 crabs cooked separately, and with two different sauces. Eh? My heart sunk at this stage thinking we may be only going to get what the chef wanted us to eat. With the timing woes and now the crab woes, were we in the Parramatta Malaysian Singapore Faulty Towers?
After maybe an hour of hiccups we finally had our menu decided. They WERE a little concerned about the amounts we ordered, but then they weren't used to a group that had one muslim, one near muslim, one Tongan, a baby and three women who all have differing tastes. They also weren't used to a group that is prepared to order big and divvy up the leftovers.
The server said 'Don't order bread, it comes with the crab.'
This simple sentence still rings in my ears. The muslim amongst us really wished to try their roti. There was a lot of food she couldn't eat due to the pork and meat, a bit of bread for sauce would have beeen nice. But no, the server said we wouldn't need it, as there would be tons of bread with the crab. This never arrived - and with all the other necessaries we had to keep asking for, the bread never got mentioned.
The crab crackers, the fingerbowls or the serviettes never arrived either - not before we had requested them three times! The first time when we asked for some extra serviettes, with crab sauce running down our chins and faces the waiter brought us four. FOUR! There were five adults eating, and a bub who likes to suck on bits of this and that. WHAT WERE WE GOING TO DO WITH FOUR STINGY PAPER SERVIETTES?
I digress, this is not the story of how we had bad service in a restaurant famous for its food. This is the story of how we had ordinary food, AND bad service in a restaurant bestowed with the title 'Best Malaysian food (insert year)'. Here's why...
If you do go to Temasek, forget the entree menu. We poached a few dishes here to ward off hunger as things were a tad slow and we were all hungry (half an hour in a cold lane will do that to you - especially when everyone has not eaten breakfast due to the early lunchtime). The prawn cutlets were fabulous - but then again they were also stock standard flattened prawn with breadcrumb coating Chinese style cutlets. The beef curry puffs were like dry old bullets - what gives with that pastry? The spring rolls were rather nasty rolls, chock a block full of meat and not much else as far as flavouring goes. There wasn't really much else to order quickly for entrees so forgive me if I missed something in thelist of five that may have been a showstopper.
Let's move onto the mains...
The first dish to turn up, Crab with Black Pepper was the star of the day. This is the crab dish we almost didn't get, and I'm so glad the chef bent over backwards to produce this. The sauce was delightfully spicy, creamy and also did not need a humungous platter to contain it. There was enough sauce to complement the crab, enough zing in each bite to make us search for more, and the crab was sweet. I am a sucker for black pepper and creamy sauces and this was just how I like it. Worth going back for in my book and others.
Shame we can't say that about the rest of the dishes.
This was quickly followed by the Gado Gado. I loves me my Gado Gado. For some reason this didn't even push my tilt metre. The veg were swimming in sauce. A smooth peanuty nothing sauce, that just about covered the plate and everything within a three mile radius. But then the veg were also very uninteresting. I don't recall finding any chunks of cabbage, the potatoes were bland as were the green beans, and hello, were there any eggs in this dish? I'm not a expert though - maybe I expected too much.
Singapore Chilli Crab - served on one ginormous humungous platter. The crab was lost in a tart sweet tomato sauce that did nothing to complement. Interstingly this crab was the same size as the previous crab which didn't need the table sized plate for serving? Oh...and none of the promised bread mentioned earlier to suck up the sauce!
Assam Seafood - the other winner for me - I loved this soupy dish. Then again I also love tart vinegary things. Apart from my son in law the rest of the table did not fall over backwards for this dish.
Kang Kong in Belacan, and Eggplant ditto. Hmmm...get that rank smelly prawn paste out of my way. The chef by this stage must have been grabbing and chucking in a frenzy. There was nothing delicate or delectable about either dish. Shame is, I really wanted to try the Kang Kong as this is one of the main veg we sell at the markets. Eggplant ditto, because it's hard to ruin eggplant in my book. Hmm...
Followed with the famous squid in thick soy - or should I say thick burnt caramel soy sauce. One bite and I'm done. As is everyone else. Nasi Goreng, which seemed to be fried rice with lots of soy sauce added to be almost black, and finally a crazy butter prawn dish that looked amazing and was much better eaten cold at home.
Overall, for a restaurant that has been so popular for so many years, I'm thinking the service could have been much better and the food a lot more consistent. We may not be experts on Singapore Malaysian cuisine, but we can't see the appeal for the masses. Perhaps the palate required for this type of cuisine is a little more obsure than we brought to the table. (Hard to figure when I live with someone who happily will eat all manner of crazy foods)
My moral to this story is, don't believe everything you read either in the SMH good food guide, or in online reviews. For not the first time we have been sadly disappointed - and when that involves a $500 bill for lunch it goes beyond tragic. Not complaining though, it's just another place to cross off the list.
Note: If I could I would add photos, except I can't get over the cheesy photos I'm seeing of late on the internet - Food Bloggers world wide going mad with camera lenses in restaurants. it's like Facebook and Twitter and all that is wrong with the world these days.
