Food Review : OXO Queensbay

We walked into the newly opened OXO Cafelab (check it out at http://oxo.com.my/). The website was very attractive and we were very impressed when we walked in. The decor in the place is excellent - most of the dining area seating is on couches which looked very comfortable. We picked the couch on a raised dais near the entrance. Good impression so far.

The manager however was a different story. We were passed a set of "express set menu" - basically it is just a piece of paper with about 5 different sets ranging from RM11.90 - RM22.90. The set comes with soup, bread, a drink, dessert and ice cream. When we requested to look at the ala carte menu, he told us not to order it as it will "take a long time". Somehow he was very reluctant to let us see the ala carte menu - why?!? It doesn't hurt to check out the choices, does it?

Anyhow, we browsed through the menu. Prices are notably steep - the standard chicken chop that you can normally get outside for about RM7 is selling for more than twice the price (RM15.80++). When our friend arrived to join us at the table, we were scolded by the manager for not telling him that we had a party of 3 as they had to re-set the extra set of utensils on the table. And this was after we had informed the waiter that we had 3 people in our party. We're obviously ticked off by his attitude.

The final straw came when my friend spotted about 4-5 flies sitting on the bread that was placed on our table. As we had been browsing through the menu, we had not noticed that they were on it. Yucks! The place was really infested with flies! When we requested to change the bread, the manager informed us that it's normal because of the swamp nearby. Erks... does this mean all the food has been visited by the flies before?

That's what we decided that enough was enough and took a walk... out of that restaurant. When the quality improves to something beyond just the decor, we'll be back. Until then, it needs some serious upgrades in terms of customer service and cleanliness.