Manhattan Fish Market, Midvalley makes me barf!

Went to the ever-crowded-on-weekends Midvalley Megamall with Shyan yesterday. Made our way through the ocean of weekend shoppers and finally stopped in front of Manhattan Fish Market.

There was a sign stating,"Please wait to be seated" at the entrance. So as obedient as we always were, we just stood there and studied the menu while waiting for their staff to guide us in. 3 minutes passed without anyone taking notice of us and we were thinking,"Hey, am I invisible to you?!". Most absurd thing was, a few of the staff had actually made eye contact with us but simply chose to ignore us! Man, do we look like paupers who can't afford to dine in your majestic fishy market?!?

Outta no other choice, we sauntered into the restaurant and seated ourselves. Cool, I'd never known MFM practices self-service. Woulda gone to the Long John Silvers next door if I had decided to serve myself (-_-). So we were expecting the staff to serve us after the initial disgust. But all we observed was the staff still walking to and fro' all over the place, carrying only a few serviettes, forks and spoons, a glass of water, etc without ever really accomplishing anything! A Malay couple in a corner were already showing disgusted and impatient expressions because no one served them too for God knew how long. It's interesting to note that 80% of the staff there were Malays too. I've always been fascinated and amazed by their efficiency - or the lack of it to be exact.

Finally, we managed to call over a waitress and gestured to her that we wanted to order. She came over and asked us about our orders. I was lamenting silently,"Gosh you should really go to an ophthalmologist to get yer eyes checked cos they look pretty blind to me! Can't you see we don't even have any menus here?!" With tension building inside me and Shyan, we politely requested for menus.

She came back with only ONE menu. Smart girl. I guess she was expecting me and Shyan to have a romantic moment by huddling closely together to read the menu. How sweet. Unable to stand her stupidity but still keeping my cool, I said,"Can you give me one more menu please?"

After that was settled, a waiter came to take our orders. We asked him something and it took him forever to understand us. We asked in English twice then BM 3-4 times but he looked like a blur sotong to us because he couldn't give us a definite answer. By now I was really getting high blood pressure. Would wanna throw him into a pan and fry him if possible, but no one must eat him in case they become as peabrained as him!

After much difficulties, we finally finished ordering. A bowl of soup and some garlic bread later, our maincourse still wasn't here. Looking around, even people who came in later than us were already happily enjoying their food. The staff even served other patrons quite speedily in terms of handing them the menus and taking down the orders. So why were we the ones getting hell?!

Thus, we asked the waiter who took our orders to check for us when would it be ready cos obviously ours was really late. When our seafood platter finally came, we decided with resignation that they probably gave our order to someone else by mistake. See, we've seen at least 4 or 5 platters with the exact same content go to other tables. If they didn't serve it to someone else by mistake, tell me why were we served 5 minutes later than people who came in 10 minutes later than us?

We were definitely extraordinarily full after the meal, mostly thanks to the anger and frustration we felt, not because of the food we ate. Even getting the bill from them took forever. The bill came up to a total of RM82.xx - I can't remember the last 2 digits.

We would be more than willing to pay that price if the service was good because honestly, the food was just so-so. And what's more, with average food and CRAPPY service, we really thought it was a rather expensive meal.

In fact, it's one of THE most horrible meals I've had in years! Basically, it was nightmarish because all I felt was the angry "qi" building inside me throughout the meal! Man, I felt so damn bloated from it!

So people, if you are reading this, NEVER EVER go to the Manhattan Fish Market in Midvalley unless you wanna pay them to get pissed! I dunno about other MFM branches in Malaysia, they might be a hell lot better but the one in Midvalley is really a hellhole in itself!