New WOK restaurant

Upstairs at Plaza Bugambilias. Apparently owned by the Chopsticks crew.

In the days when I hung out on TOB, I often reviewed restaurants. Eventually I stopped posting negative reviews unless a place really got under my skin. Well, today this place earned my dislike.

I went and got only two dishes today to try them out. No signage, short menu, but that's okay. I decided to get it para llevar because the dirty little tables and terrible ambience of that area is just not conducive to... anything.

Talk about puny servings. $135p each should give you enough in each dish for two people. One beef dish and one shrimp dish. There was a ton of noodles in each, but the total number of shrimp cut up in the one dish was maybe 2, 3 tops. There is more beef in a taco on the plaza than there was in the other dish. I feel ripped off.

As if that wasn't enough to raise my ire, both dishes were about the most bland I've ever tasted. You get better food at the stand at the big plaza, which I find kinda dull anyway (but for 75p you get as much food as in both these dishes combined). And one of the dishes had chilis of some sort. This kind of food is not supposed to be spicy, unless they are catering to a Mexican audience, in which case both should have been spicy and more than what I got. That's just an inconsistency.

$270p for a boring lunch with a a little pile of leftover noodles. Never again.

I have to add that the beef dish apparently does have some heat to it... does not show up on their very hastily-prepared menu, but a friend was talking to Betty at Chopsticks about it.

That sounds like the original location for Chopsticks. I agree, dismal and claustrophic. Couldn't wait to get out of there. As I was walking away Betty's husband stops me, says I see you are walking with a limp, goes down on one knee, says do you mind if I pray for you. I said no thank you, I'm good, and continued to limp away. I felt kind of bad, but it was a spooky, surreal experience.
A second experience at their new location was also very strange. They are a very religious family, I get that, but there are polite boundaries.

Now I recall where I actually found out about the place... a review in this week's Guad Reporter. But I am told by the reviewer that they actually ordered downstairs at Chopstick's, at Betty's request. It may well be that the money I forked over to the wok chef upstairs will stay with him... . They should be sending people downstairs. It will be a bit before they get it together, I guess, in terms of that kind of thing. In terms of food, I doubt that will ever happen.