Food Review: Sabaidee Kitchen

I bought a coupon from Groupon last week.

"$14.80 for Thai Steamboat Buffet at Sabaidee Kitchen in Outram (Worth $40.50). Two and Four Pax Options Available."

I thought it should be quite reliable, since so many deals website offered similar deals for this place, and I've had a good impression of Goupon thus far. But it turned out to be a real disappointment. Seriously, it was the worst $30 I've ever spent.

According to both the pictures shown on the website and the voucher, it was supposed to be mookata style.

In case you don't know, this is the mookata steam boat.

And I thought to myself, since it's bbqed, the food can't really taste that bad even if it's not nice, and since the buffet spread stated unlimited refill of meat and vegetable platter, it SHOULD be worth it.

Wrong.

The restaurant itself has a very simple layout.

There were quite a few of lup-sup bars and pubs in the area so we were glad that the place at least looked decent. Everything was very basic, but at least it looked clean. Though there was a mattress in the corner and I suppose that's where the workers sleep at night.

Upon verifying our coupon, the workers told us that the restaurant hasn't offered mookata style for a year. So instead, what the 'buffet' entails was this

A really really small pot meant for two people to share.

We asked them, then why the picture of the mookata style steamboat, since it was really misleading. They said that Groupon went ahead with the picture without consulting them, and if customers were unhappy they can contact Groupon about it for a refund or whatsoever. 

Yes, we can get a refund, but this is just false advertising isn't it. Not to mention how we had to buy the coupon, call the restaurant repeatedly before successfully making a booking (It was so hard making a reservation at this place. They pick up the phone like 1/100 times you call, and when we were there, we saw the phone ringing off the hook and none of the two workers there bothered about it even when they weren't doing anything.), go down all the way there just to find that it wasn't what we had bargained for.

Never mind, we though, I didn't want to go through all the trouble of emailing back and forth for the refund, so we thought we'll just go ahead with the meal anyway. 

Big mistake.

The 'buffet' spread was really limited. Fish, chicken, beef, pork, squid, prawns, various vege and eggs and that's it.

None of the meat was marinated and the prawn was not fresh and tasted funny. The whole thing was so plain and tasted so horrible we ended up trying to make our own marinade with soya sauce and chilli. But it only made it taste marginally better (still taste really horrible).

We gave up eating halfway through and just went to Vivocity to grab McDonalds for dinner instead.

Seriously, the $30 can be so much better spent else where. Skip this place, really.