Hi all,
Just to share a recent food tasting experience at GCW. I'm desperately in need of advice. My AD is coming in less than 2 months so the food tasting was arranged in early January. We were charged about $400++ for the food tasting. The whole experience, food and service were unfortunately, big disappointment.
My coordinator came by only at the start of the food tasting and went missing (gone home) despite her promising my husband that she will be back to check on us after attending to another group. The chef was the only one who came to discuss the menu and dishes. Out of the 8 courses of dishes, only 3, were satisfactory. Keeping in mind, the standards usually drop further on AD due to mass production, we were really worried. Out of the 8 dishes, we have decided to change 5. Out of the 8 dishes, there were 2 dishes whereby all at the table tasted less than 2 spoonfuls and left the rest untouched. With all these in mind, we really like to have a 2nd food tasting to gain some confidence back. Everyone in the room expect the next food tasting to be FOC but unfortunately our coordinator insisted on charging us the whole $400++ for the 2nd food tasting. We feel that GCW or the coordinator only have $ in mind more than customer satisfaction. With all these, we have decided to just pay the 1st food tasting and do without the second.
Does anyone has comments or tried the following dishes from GCW? (Our amended menu)
1) Lobster soup (chef's experimental dish requested by my husband)
2) Herbal steam pawns
3) Steam (qin zhen) garoupa
4) E-Fu noodles
5) Yam Paste with ginkgo
Followings are our comments on various dishes for our 1st food tasting
1) Prawn Cocktail Combination Platter - Presentation: satisfactory (4 star hotel standard) Taste: Satisfactory
2) Braised Harsma with four treasures - Presentation: satisfactory Taste: heavy fishy scallop smell and taste, otherwise taste is alright. Dish change to Lobster soup
3) Roasted Crispy Chicken flavored with fermented beancurd sauce - Presentation : satisfactory Taste: Satisfactory. Fermented beancurd sauce is unnecessary
4) Baked prawn wrapped in bacon & stir fried pawn - Presentation: unsatisfactory, totally rojak style. Looked all black and brown. Taste : prawn with bacon was well-received but not the stir-fried prawn, too salty. Dish Change to herbal steamed prawn
5) Braised sea cucumber & mushrooms with garden vege. - Presentation: satisfactory Taste: good. This is best dish of all the 8 tasted.
6) Steamed Fresh Garoupa with Chinese preserved cabbage - Presentation: unsatisfactory, messy. Taste: overcooked. so overcooked and hard, we don't feel any "freshness" Dish changed to simple steam garoupa with soya sauce.
7) Stewed "udon" with dried shrimps, preserved vege and yellow chives. - Presentation: disastrous rojak brown noodles. Taste: disastrous. Whole dish is almost untouched after 1st bite. Does not taste like udon nor noodles. taste like fish ball in strips fried with rojak of veges. The only one enjoying this was a huge housefly(have photo to show)
Change this dish to normal E-Fu noodles.
8) Chilled mango pudding served with raspberry sauce. - Presentation: barely satisfactory. taste: Bad. no mango in it and far too hard and dry to be pudding. taste and smell like colour preservative and lot of sugar. Mostly untouched after 1st taste. Change to traditional yam paste.
Our families who have gone with us for the food tasting were all shock to know that we have to pay about $400++ for such quality of food when all food tastings our siblings had been to with other 5 stars hotels were free even after 2nd round of food tasting.
My husband and I are now worried about the quality of service render on AD. What if they have similar standard of foods served and similar "not-my-problem-just-pay-what is-already-served" attitude from staff? Is there any way we can protect ourselves from this? Anyone has a coordinator more responsible and committed?
