One night after a long day at the beach, we decided that we should head out for a nice dinner. Since we had a coupon for $25 off (a gracious gift given by Non-Stop Travel for booking a trip on the Pride of Aloha), it was a good time to use the coupon since we’ve had it for quite some time and it was going to expire soon.
First off the ambience is very nice. The restaurant it dimly lit, but with accents that have a very indian and southwest asian look to it. The restaurant was not very packed, but I know that I’ve seen it much more packed before, so I wasn’t too worried about the amount of people.
Let’s start off with the food. We purchased the set menu for two, which included either one satay, small plate, or salad to share, two big plates for the entrees, and one dessert. This would cost us $33 per person. We ended up ordering the salt and pepper calamari with shrimp as our appetizer to share, which came with a vinegar and green chili sauce. It was very good. The batter was very light and crispy, so we definitely enjoyed this dish. The sauce was also very good, and I almost wanted to keep it for what else was to come. The normal price for this appetizer was $12. For the entrees, I got the chili plum glazed rack of lamb, which was on top of a sweet onion curry risotto and was served with a side of sesame tempura asparagus (original price $28). It was very tender (but not as tender as the lamb at Le Bistro…which by far as the best lamb ever), and the chili plum was a good complement to the lamb. The lamb did not have a gamey taste, but they did include mint just in case. The curry risotto was a big surprise, and I’m not normally a big fan of risotto, but I think I could eat a huge bowl of that. My girlfriend got the thai style fish of the day, which was the tender opakapaka. You could have a choice between thai, vietmanese, or indonesian (original price $23). She said the thai style was a bit salty, and the forbidden black rice was not that tasty and was too crunchy. She did enjoy the tangy cucumber salad with a roasted aromatic rice powder that came with it though. The thai style was basically frying the fish crispy with a basil, shallot, and chili sauce.
For desert we got the sundae with coconut (1 scoop) and banana (2 scoops) gelato, with fudge sauce and coconut shavings. It was surprising good, especially the coconut gelato. I wished they had given us 2 scoops of coconut gelato since it was so good, but oh well. This was originally $7.
So with the set for two, if you purchase things that are kind of pricier, it would save you some money. In this case, it saved us only $4.
I only have three complaints. The service was REAAAAAAAAAAAALLY slow for a restaurant that was pretty empty that one night we went. The waitress just kept on talking to her coworker and just took her time. That kind of irritated us. Another thing about the waitress was that when we said that we ordered the dinner for two, she disregarded this or forgot and charged us the entire price. Maybe because she wasn’t paying attention. The other complaint was when we presented the $25 coupon. Instead of taking off the entire $25, she subtracted $12.50 from the bill, taxed it, then subtracted another $12.50. She said it had to split up, but couldn’t really come up a reason why, and didn’t explain it too well. This of course meant that we had to pay a little more, because we had to pay tax on a larger total. It’s more of the principal than the actual cost.
So bottomline, the food was pretty good, the service was kind of bad (perhaps just our waitress?), and the coupon wasn’t calculated correctly. I might try it again, but probably with a different waitress.
Tags: Restaurant Reviews
Loading ...
