Hoshino Coffee @ Plaza Singapura PS Cafe Review 星乃珈琲店 オフィシャルサイト

To Hoshino: Tell your Indian staff. Do Not use the customer's napkins to pick up food bits and wipe the customer's table while the customer is still sitting there!

1) Customer's napkins and cutlery are for the customers to use! Not for the staff to take and use!
2) Don't your staff have a proper cloth to wipe the table?
3) Why is your staff wiping the table in such a bad way while the customer is still sitting there?

Your staff need to be better trained. Very unprofessional and slow service.

I was there on 6 August at 5.30 pm, intending to try all the dishes that have been positively reviewed online.

Bro and I were seated quickly as the dinner crowd was not out yet.

Menu was limited as Bro complained (to him, small morsels like that wasn't real food), but I came to try what they had.  Some time back, I was first attracted to their lovely replicas of desserts at the front of the cafe. I'm sure the replicas are what attracted many ladies as well.

Ready to order their spaghetti,  the waitress unfortunately had to inform us that all their spaghetti dishes are made with beef stock.

What about their omu rice? Also beef stock. Pot-baked curry?  Souffle? All beef stock.

In fact, only 1 dish wasn't made with beef stock, and that was the unattractive Eggplant and Tomato Spaghetti, supposedly vegetarian.  I didn't want Toast and Sandwiches for dinner.

Frankly, why did the waitress have to tell us the dishes were made of beef stock? Don't Hoshino want money and happy customers? What the customer don't know,  the customer will be happy.

Now, at that table, knowing that I couldn't eat any of the delicious stuff that others had reviewed about,  made me unhappy.

Fine. I decided since we were already there, I had to order at least their dessert.

Bro by that time was really displeased that I chose Hoshino to have our dinner.  He had said he wanted Swensens, but I had wanted Hoshino.

We had to agree then, that we would eat a real dinner at Swensens, while he would share with me the Hoshino desserts.

I ordered the Matcha Ogura Bean Paste Pancake Souffle and French Toast. 

The waitress informed it would take half hour.

Half hour for dessert? My first thoughts: They only have 1 cook?  They bake the thing? 

When the waitress walked away, Bro gave me a totally disgusted and displeased look, "Half hour leh. You can wait half hour meh?".

I consoled him. "Nevermind. When we no longer want to wait,  we'll just get up and leave. After all, we didn't pay for anything yet.  I didn't eat anything, didn't steal anything. We can just walk out the side.  It's open there. Their fault for being so slow.". 

He was appeased.

When the Matcha Pancake came first, and while sharing with bro,  I accidentally dropped the chestnut near my table edge.

The pancake was fluffy but otherwise nothing special. The Matcha ice cream was slightly bitter, and didn't go quite well with the pancake. It was passable only because I was hungry.

After finishing, the same waitress came over to take away our plates. But she reached for the napkin on our table and started slowly wiping the table, slowly smearing the remnants on the table as she picked up and wiped while we watched.

After that, she said cheerily, "Thank you!" and walked away.

There is something very perverse and wrong with that.

The table was fine. We didn't require the table to be wiped. Just bring the next damn dessert that we ordered so we can get going.

I think staff should not wipe the table while the customer is sitting there unless something spilled. This is not a hawker center. This is a cafe in a mall.  By wiping the table in such a manner, the staff is embarrassing the customer for having been "messy".  Never wipe the table while the customer is still sitting there!!!

A few minutes later, the French Toast arrived.

Unexpectedly, the "ice-cream" at the top, which we found out later was some kind of cheese cream, fell off the pile of toast and onto the table right after the waitress served it.

I called another waitress.  She took one of the cutlery from our table and used it to push the "ice cream" back onto the side of the dish.

Why didn't she take a separate plate and scoop the fallen ice-cream up onto it instead of putting it back onto our dish (which I don't doubt will be served to us again)?  Why didn't the cook ensure that the scoop was properly and well placed before it was served?

Watching the waitress push the ice-cream back onto our dish... I really felt I was watching very amateurish and unprofessional behavior.

Another few minutes, the pile of French Toast returned with a new (I assume) topping of the cream cheese.

At the end, the Indian cook who made our desserts, doubled up as the cashier. He asked Bro how was the pancake.  Due to the man's rabbit front teeth, Bro didn't get what he said at first. Upon a repeat of the question, Bro replied that it was Ok. 

I had gone to the ladies at the time, but when bro explained and mimicked the man's teeth and accent, I laughed and laughed out loud at Swensens. I said too bad I wasn't there to see it. But agreed that he was right to say that the pancake was Ok.  As I said, it was passable.

The total cost with GST was just $27.42. A reasonable price for 2 desserts.

Incidentally,  I feel it's pretty sad that a Japanese cafe/restaurant has an Indian cook. Shouldn't a Japanese cafe/restaurant have Japanese cooks at least?