It tasted off right from the beginning.

I mean, if you’ve eaten the dish several times already, you’d know something is not right. I ate several spoons of noodle and vegetable before touching the prawns. They looked sickly, soft to the touch and smelled bad. I was rather disappointed that there weren’t any maggot when I peeled the skin.

Needless to say, I totally lost my appetite.

I showed the waitress the smelly prawns and she took them back to the kitchen. I was kind of expecting that she would come back and apologise and maybe give me a discount or something as compensation. Nothing happened. When I got the bill, I asked her whether any action will be taken regarding the matter. She only said no and that the kitchen staff apologised for the bad prawns. I told her, since they were not taking any action on this, I will take action.

So… what I did or going to do..

1. The moment I got back to the office, I complained to Secret Recipe via their website.
2. I wrote about it in my blog and other community boards.
3. Write to the newspapers.

Why did I not complain to the manager, you asked. Simply because I am not the type who likes to make scenes in public. If I did complain and they give me a new bowl of Tom Yum Kung noodle, I’d probably get slightly fresher but still bad prawns as before. Just so that you know, a colleague of mine sitting several tables away also had the same dish, and she also had same bad prawns.

So, my motive is more to teaching them a lesson. The more people know about this, the better they’ll learn that serving bad food is totally unacceptable.

It’s very disappointing that something like this is happening at an established food outlet like Secret Recipe.

___________________________________

Updates (05/01/2008)

I sent this message to Secret Recipe via their website on 30/12/2008:

“I had tom yum kung for lunch today at your outlet at KL Sentral. Did you know that they served prawns that already went bad? The smell was awful and I was surprised that they didn’t have maggots on them. I did not call the manager to complain mainly because I had already lost my appetite. I asked the waitress whether any action will be taken on the matter but she said it was the kitchen staff’s responsibility and not hers. So because of that, I will take action. A lot of people will know about this. Highly likely the newspapers as well.“

Their Customer Services responded a couple of hours later:

“Dear Mr Awangku,
.
Thank you for your email.
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On behalf of the team we apologize for your unpleasant experience. We will forward your comments to our higher management for further investigation.
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Our outlet manager should be contacting you soon about this.“

I responded by informing them that similar incident happened to my colleague around the same time and left them my phone number.

Today, around noon, the Secret Recipe franchisee manager (if I’m not mistaken) called me. We had a little chat, which you can easily guess what we talked about, and around 20 minutes ago, I received this email from her:

“Dear En Awang,

As spoken this morning, first and foremost our humble apology for the unpleasant experience at our KL Sentral outlet. We are investigating the matter and our outlet Manager, Ms Farah will get to you shortly. Your friend’s incident will also be investigated and we will revert to her shortly. Yes, as agreed, we are prepared to offer you and your friend, Cik Mahani a complimentary meal at our outlet.

We assure you that this unfortunate incident is unusual and it does not represent the overall standard and quality of Secret Recipe ie it could be due to some mistake at our outlet only.  In any case, we thank you for patronising our outlet and hope to see you again. Thanks for the feedback, you will be contacted shortly for the detail explanation and complimentary meal.“

To be honest, I’m not really pining for the complimentary meal and it doesn’t bother me at all whether they gave me one or not. I’m just disappointed that something like this can happen in a respectable food outlet. They should be more strict with the food quality control.