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| Should have ate somewhere else. |
Had a bad dinner experience at
Rocku Yakiniku recently.
The exterior looks great, pictures of shiny oily meat and a member of staff stationed outside so that you wouldn't have to wait for someone to show you in.
Check out the brochure:
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| PLUS PLUS PLUS PLUS PLUS!!! |
Note that nowhere on the brochure does it state that should you get thirsty after devouring large amounts of meat, that plain water is not provided for free. Also, the 100 minutes time limit seems fine albeit a little stingy, but more on that later.
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| Quench your thirst elsewhere |
After you are seated, a waiter will inform you that they will serve you a serving of EVERYTHING on the menu as a "starter set", then you MAY order more if that is not enough. While you are wondering what kind of demented restaurateur would dictate that you eat everything on the menu before being able to order what you like, some guy swoops in and drops off white hot coal into the table. There is no casual reminder of what time they expect you to GTFO by.
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| Mandatory serving |
While the mandatory serving is a bit of a dick move, and I've read reviews where a party of two were given this serving - unable to finish - and ended up charged for wasting food (Scam alert?); it is rather nicely laid out in terms of presentation.
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| mmm... |
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| GM is cooking meat faster than my autofocus |
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| Random panorama |
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| Blegh |
The last bit of the mandatory serving, I don't usually eat chicken; salmon; prawns; enoki mushrooms; squid; and mussels when I am having bbq. I didn't enjoy having these meats forced upon me at this joint.
Did I mention that the chicken and beef were very much tasteless? The pork was nice though.
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| OMFG! A live band? No way! SHUT UP! |
Lets talk about the ambience now. As you would expect from a 100 mins time limit restaurant, they do not want any semblance of conversation taking place that would cause your eating speed to drop. The music is very loud, and very very CHINESE. Have you been to a Singaporean pool and billiards house? This place has the exact same soundtrack except so loud that you couldn't possibly chat casually.
I would have preferred Japanese music to be played, and at a softer volume.
Then the live band performance started, it was bad.
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| Not a happy customer |
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| Charcoal burnt out |
About an hour into the meal, our charcoal was burning out and it was near impossible to cook any meat. We informed a waiter about it but he commented that it's still hot, doesn't need to be changed. Instead, he got a circular wooden board and covered the pit for a few seconds then walked off looking very pleased with himself. All he did was speed up the burning of the charcoal, for a momentary increase in heat to shut our mouths. 5 minutes later, the charcoal was completely spent and we still had a lot of meat left to be cooked.
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| We don't just do this for anybody, be thankful |
We complained to another waiter and he disappeared for a really long time before they finally topped up the charcoal. We continued our meal but were informed by a manager that we had only 5 minutes left to go. I guess she didn't realise that her staff wasted our time with the whole charcoal fiasco.
Pissed off, we took our sweet time finishing up the rest of the meal, and the manager appeared 5 minutes later to say this: "I will let you have 5 more minutes to eat."
Nice. Such magnanimous. Very grace. Much service. Wow.
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| Green clipboard: Above mentioned manager |
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| Built in deathtrap |
Well, it was expensive and bad, they lost a pair of customers that day. There are way better restaurants in the same building anyway, we always enjoy Ramen Challenge.
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| Selfie |
Time for desserts!
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| Mochi! |
Located at the connector between Bugis Junction and Bugis+. Looks yummy and affordable, so we bought some to get over the terrible meal at Rocku.
Here's the menu:
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| Front |
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| Back |
We bought sakura/ red bean/ mango yoghurt/ chocolate/ chocolate mousse/ green tea.
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| Nice box |
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| Labelled mochi is a nice touch |
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| Soft and chewy |
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| Chocolate dusting Macro shot |
The flavours were all good, the mochi skin is very soft and stretchy, have to let it thaw for 30-40mins when buying from the store because they freeze the mochi.
Between the 2 chocolate flavours, I prefer chocolate over chocolate mousse, simply because it has chocolate dusting on the mochi. Messy to eat though.
Definitely going back to try out the other flavours, honey lemon sounds good...
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