Dining service standards - mixing the good with the bad?

Before heading off to hear Justin’s choir, (the International Festival Chorus, who performed French choral music including Faure’s Requiem last night), some friends and I headed for Xintiandi for a wander about and dinner.

In the superb sunny but not too hot weather, it was perfect for al fresco dining. We sat at KABB, a ‘western’ restaurant which serves pastas, grilled meats, burgers, burritos…

I’ve come before in the evening and had burgers off their lunch menu – delicious. Last time I came they told me they had run out of burgers, last night was the same again – I was encouraged to order from the main menu.

We had a couple of small tribulations. Firstly while they tried to seat us. In moving small outdoor tables and chairs around to fit our group of five, at first they didn’t leave enough space for us all to sit. About ten minutes later, having sat down and looked through the menus, we were told to get up and move, because we were breaking ‘xintiandi’s table placement rules’. I did point out to the rather rude waiter that they had placed the tables not us… he did apologise and moved the tables for us once more.

His attitude improved somewhat after that. He now suggested that they might be having burgers delivered in the next ten minutes – the very ones that don’t exist on the dinner menu that I couldn’t have earlier. Quite why fresh meat burgers would get delivered in the late afternoon (6pm) when they’re not on the dinner menu, I’m not so sure of. I suspected that they wanted to keep the evening meat options to the more expensive grill items, which is fair enough I suppose.

I ordered a bottle of wine – the house red, which I thought was eminently enjoyable. At RMB200, it’s a similar price to house wine back home (13 pounds), which is pretty pricey when I start to think about it in terms of how many crates of beer or bottles of absolut vodka I can buy (I recently bought absolut, Malibu and bacardi bottles for RMB100 each in a supermarket – clearly alcoholism is not taxed as heavily here!). Issues with the wine were that of the 5 wine glasses, two had to be sent back – one dirty and one chipped. Ideally waiters would spot that kind of thing themselves. Or even the kitchen staff would clean them properly. Another problem was that the tables were made of metal mesh – the implication of which dawned upon me when the waiter was already leaning across me to pour my wine. As he pulled away from the glass, a few drops of red wine fell onto my cream linen trousers. He apologized again, explaining that “wine pouring skills were low in china”. A training issue I think – there are lots of easy ways to avoid this. Like knowing how to use the white cloth napkin so elegantly draped around the bottle to catch drips, not just leave it looking pretty for example.

Cynics among you could say that he spilt a little wine on me because I was being an awkward customer. It’s possible, but I don’t think I was, I think I was quite polite and courteous, but just making requests of what I expected or wanted. I’m going to write it off myself as training issues. It’s disappointing that customers like myself who want to eat regularly in such places, have little choice but to train waiting staff ourselves – upon encountering any number of minor issues.

These minor issues aside, we had a lovely meal. The food I understand was very good – including what looked like a primavera pasta with lots of sauce, a chicken and avocado (yes avocado in shanghai!!!) salad, chicken and stake burritos, and of course my burger, cooked medium rare as requested. Superb also to eat and drink wine with friends in such a spectacular setting.

We had a friend visiting from Hong Kong – Melody. She indeed admired xintiandi, and appreciated being able to eat outdoors – suggesting that she didn’t know of anywhere for al-fresco dining in HK. The good is really good. But there’s a bad side too, which not everyone can cope with. To give you another example, I’m getting used to the fact that in some restaurants such as Shang Dao coffee (UBC coffee), where you can eat quite good meals, they often have considerable trouble bringing out meals all at once (they don’t try at all). The result is that slightly uncomfortable “oh no, don’t wait for us, it’ll go cold” “oh no, I really don’t mind” lahdi dah, for a good half an hour while the staff panic and rush around.

I’m not sure what I’d think if I was a visitor. But there are so many great things about Shanghai that I’m really enjoying, especially having found hobbies (and with hobbies come like minded friends, which in turn one hopes leads to good friends), and so the vast majority of the time I think I’m happy to take the good with the bad. Yesterday’s dinner only cost RMB90 (6 pounds) each including wine. To eat in fine surroundings al fresco with well made food, you’ve got to admit you can’t get this kind of value elsewhere.