Zebra.C at Bugis+

Do yourself a favour and never step into this place. I would go so far as to say that this was my worst dining experience this year and there is honestly no rational reason nor excuse for anybody to waste good money to subject yourself to such a horrifying experience

I reached Bugis+ late on Friday evening and was already suffering from a mild gastric pain. Wasn't feeling too well yesterday and the combination of a lack of food with a slight sore throat was pretty bad. So I told the boyfriend that I wanted to have something without a long queue at the front. That left us with only Zebra.C and Asian Kitchen. I thought it would be interesting to try something new so we went into Zebra.C. 

They have a special set menu for the month. I close the Teriyaki Chicken Stone Pot Rice Set while the boyfriend chose the Sizzling Beef Lettuce Wrap Set. We placed our order at around 740pm and by 8pm we were still not served our drinks. I noticed the tables that arrived after us were beginning to receive their drinks and side dishes. I also noticed the waiter who took our order glancing at us sheepishly for a moment and scuttling over to the machine. A moment later he approached our table with our order printed on a slip of paper and handed it to us. The piece of paper reflected the time he entered our order into the system and indeed, it was 8pm. So he sat happily on our order for a whole 20 minutes before keying in our orders. And that came without an apology at all. He just pretended that it was a completely normal procedure and placed the order form on  our table then turned to walk away. I called him back, pointed this out to him and told him to ask his kitchen to expedite our orders because it was not our fault that our orders were keyed in belatedly. 

And that was when I realised that he had actually keyed in the wrong order! He ordered the Mega Chicken Leg on Hot Plate Set for the boyfriend instead. Ok, so not only did he sit on our order for an entire 20 minutes, he got the order wrong as well! Impressive service.

My iced lemon tea, soft-shell crab, tofu and miso soup. None of them was appetizing. The soft-shell crab was not crispy and was quite soggy. It felt like it was fried at noon and left there on the pan for the rest of the afternoon before being served at night. The tofu was like ordinary tofu that I order at the mixed vegetable rice stall. Let's not talk about the miso soup.

My Teriyaki Chicken Stone Pot Rice Set. I thought nobody could go wrong with Teriyaki Chicken but boy was I wrong. This plate of substance was really such a disappointment that I cannot even begin to explain what was wrong with it. Let me try. First, there was too much diluted sauce. The teriyaki sauce was evidently a sub-grade one, or perhaps they purchased a good grade teriyaki sauce but decided to mix some other liquid into it. In any case, it tasted bad. There was so much bad sauce that my entire bowl of rice became this murky mush of rice with bad sauce. The chicken was completely tasteless. Frankly, its amazing how the chicken could be that tasteless when there was so much sauce around. 

I refused to try my boyfriend's dish because he said it was bad too and tasted like they planted peppers in the backyard which resulted in an overdose of pepper in the sauce. 

I have no idea why we were served a creme brulee because it does not seem like our sets came with a dessert. I was too tired and upset by the end of the meal that I was completely unable to muster the strength to ask them. Perhaps it was a wrong order (again), or perhaps it was a free dessert to mollify us for the tardiness in processing our orders. Nobody mentioned this as a gesture of goodwill so I doubt it was a complimentary dessert to apologize. In any case, the creme brulee was really bad. The layer of sugar was too thick and I actually had to crunch through it when I pop it into my mouth. We had a mouthful each and left the rest there.

This was one very upsetting dinner experience. I could definitely do better by spending that amount of money somewhere else for something much better. 

#04-13 Bugis+