Teppanyaki chef exercises favoritism

I actually planned to talk about this in my long pending post along with few other recent happenings until I realized that I actually have a lot more to say for this.

This actually happened at Sakae Teppanyaki, Bugis Junction. Before I plunge into the story, just want to make it clear that this is by far the first time I had experienced such unfair treatment at Sakae. (Favorite branch still in Tampines!!) It's not a total big deal, but it's very unprofessional, especially coming from a teppanyaki chef, where everything is transparent - customers see everything you are doing.

So wx and I were seated at this booth with another family of three. They were there before us, already served with some food, and were chatting with the chef quite frequently. After the chef confirmed our orders with us, he started making our garlic fried rice. For the next 10 mins, the chef only prepped food for that family. In fact, we literally finished our rice before we were served with ours. I really wondered how much food that family had ordered, because even when the chef was finally cooking for us, he was still cooking for them! Then here's where it got worse...

First dish up is the squid. Squid is a common dish in both seafood and beef set. Apparently, that x amount of squid was to be split amongst the five of us at the table - ie. 20% for the each of us. To get an exact even split is tough, but I've always seen the past teppanyaki chefs try their best at it. Do a rough split first then spread the remaining bits among those who got a smaller portion. Seriously, I think I got 10-12 pieces, plus what wx got, we got only approximately 15%. The chef, in his dear judgement, served the remaining bits (1%) to the man of that family. Okay..he is a lot bigger in size but that does not make him deserve more food than I do. We pay the same price, and the chef has no rights to deprive me of what I should be getting for him to suck up to his other customers!!

And... Should teppanyaki chefs talk while they cook? Some hygiene concerns here eh.

In direct contrast, I have seen very nice teppanyaki chefs. Not those chatty slash "friendly" type, but real service. Chinese chef at Plaza Singapura branch, very polite and the only person who bothered with us when the Malay (?) waitress was busy trying to appear occupied - slowly laying out plates at an empty table instead of serving customers first.

Maybe a training program would help? :p Would strongly suggest studying the customer service at Din Tai Feng. Even an appetizer is weighed for every customer, and waitresses are usually friendly.

Ah can't wait to have my grand teppanyaki feast in December! How grand? I should have $90 to spend on my Sakae Card soon :) That's roughly 2 meals for two at Sakae Teppanyaki.

野猫

它们的生活是怎样的呢？

Sakae Sushi not ideal for Family Dining..

So I finally took my family to Sakae Sushi @ Wheelock Place earlier this month to use my $50 voucher. Picked this location particularly because I saw on the website that it has tatami rooms!

But we didn't get the tatami room :( It was all dark as if that part of the shop is not yet open for business. What's worse was that one of the waitresses actually told us to not put our stroller beside our booths (my niece was still in there at that time). A little disappointing but understandable, as I really thought that the waitresses should offer us a tatami room if they didn't want us to have the stroller in the walkway - could be dangerous with them serving hot food. (We should have requested then too :\) Reason is simple. We were a big party with 4 adults 1 child 1 baby plus a baby stroller. It's very inconvenient to eat while carrying a baby, you know. Instead of asking your customers to adjust to your store plan, you should be trying to accustom to all your customers' needs at all times. That's what customer service is about, right?

So then we ordered 2 unagi-don, 1 gyuu-don, some side dishes, and some colored plates off the sushi train. I must say that the Enoki Niku Maki is quite disappointing - overflowing with teriyaki sauce, too sweet! It's a lot darker (black sauce) than in this picture. But the Saba Shioyaki is not bad for my dad - I think he enjoyed it.

The meal totals out to be $95 - $50 (voucher) = $45. This is my first time ordering ala carte at Sakae Sushi, and I believe it would be my last LOL. To be honest, Sakae Sushi's food is not top grade, though still lot better than those really cheap ones. Ala carte..sure, but cost-wise, is a little too pricey for me. So their buffets are the best - value deals especially if you eat a lot or eat a wide variety! & you have my honest opinion here :)

Just one thing to note when eating buffets:
If you want to use Sakae Sushi vouchers or if you want to benefit from 10% discount and/or 12% rebate from your Sakae Card, then you have to go ala carte. Sad, but the buffets are in fact a "promotion", so not valid with any other promotions.

Oh, and why Sakae Sushi is not ideal for families?

Sakae Sushi's primary seating areas are the booths, because of the sushi train. But not great for a big family with kids. That's why a tatami room is perfect! Best to come in twos, so both can get their hands on the sushi train running by them :D

If you're interested in trying out at Sakae Sushi, check out Sakae Sushi's on-going promotions!

Oh, I noticed that there's a Sakae Pasta Shop @ Wheelock Place! Worth a try next time :)

Same Name - Same Logo - Different Company

I signed up for Social Mention alerts to inform me of any "Cellcity" presence out there in the online social community.

BTW, every company should be doing this - keep track of brand name mentions and keywords - stay connected with your potential customers the quick and easy way. Social Mention is a handy tool for brands to monitor and analyze their influence/presence in the social media - blogs, Facebook, Twitter etc.

So anyways, I received an alert this morning, which brought me to this page. It's a Facebook Fan Page for a US wireless retailer called Cell City. Despite the name being identical to my current company in Singapore, trust me that we have no relations to this US company at all. Having the same name is actually still quite acceptable - 1. the name has not been patented and 2. as we are both in the wireless industry, it's not hard to think of our businesses as "a cellular city" or "building a city in the cellular world" - thus "cellcity". You can't really tell if anyone did copy the other. But to have the same logo (or very very similar) is a little freaky.

Cellcity @ Singapore:

We have been using our logo (plus a couple very minor variations) for at least a year now. I particularly liked the little city landscape captured in that "cellphone" on the right of the text. And what's also so neat about it is the iconic properties of that "cellphone" shape.

Cell City @ US:

This logo is taken from the Facebook page I found. Almost identical to ours, except for the font type and color (tbh, we had this shade of golden yellow/orange in our earlier variations), plus they used a real cellphone image for the icon with the signal sign instead of a city landscape. Other than that, the style of the text (bubbled letters and how "cell" is white and "city" is colored) and the idea/position of the cellphone icon are identical. This logo was uploaded onto the profile May this year. Another logo was used previously if you check out their Profile Pictures album.

Not really pointing fingers here as I don't have any actual evidence of plagiarism here (who came first??) But just a "sigh" at the professionalism of either designers or companies. It's one thing being inspired by another company's logo, but it's another thing when you actually copy 80% of it, tweak the remaining 20% and take it as yours. Hard for me to believe that these 2 examples are actually genuine and original concepts from two different designers for two different companies. Can you?

walk for cause.

Well well.. I've never done any thing of this kind before, as I claim to be an 'apathetic' person. But I did it! And I did two Sundays of 6.6km walking in preparation for today.

The idea:
The social media is quite a charm in this aspect of 'influence', I must say. I've heard so many events being talked about online, from pinkdot to tweetups and twestival, but I never once participated in any. Except for the Singapore Youth Olympic Games countdown celebration, which I only showed up for 5 mins to get my collection pin. So this is really my first. I got interested, plus drawn in by the PINK tees, plus I figured that this would be a good opportunity (motivation!) for me to start building my health, plus my mom was complaining that she was always busy with the babies and hadn't had the time to exercise at all, so I thought I would pull her along on this event - for personal reasons, you know, at the very least.

What actually happened:
And so she finally agreed to join me in the walk. I went to collect our goodie bags with the pink tees last Friday. Realized afterwards that the tees were made real tight! I barely managed to fit in a size M, and the largest size L (for my mom) is literally just 1cm longer and 0.3cm wider zzz And non-exchangeable too :( Turns out this morning that my mom couldn't come along because she wasn't able to get any sleep the whole night. Boo.

So I went with my dad. He was supposed to "substitute" my mom, but he was too, should I say, shy to join in officially (you will see why). The walk was a lot more tiring than usual! Lots and lots of participants - mostly women. First, we had to overtake at least 50 peeps to get a comfortable distance and pace. Second, my old man is really fast :o barely keeping up with his speed. At the end of the walk, my calves felt as if they'd been carrying ten tonnes of weight on the road. Good thing was, we were welcomed with Swensen's ice-cream (+ 25% off Reebok & free disposable razors) ! And this was where my dad failed. He thought it embarrassing to get himself an ice-cream because he didn't register for the walk, in theory. DOH! I even asked him if he wanted one (assuming that I would be getting it for him if he had said "yes") but he shook his head. Then when we were talking about it at home, he admitted that he wanted that ice-cream. Wasted lah! -_-

Still had quite a few vouchers from the goodie bags we got. Complimentary foot massage, spa, body treatment etc. Time to plan a relaxing weekend!