Soul-less dining

I've been a member of Changi Club for years. To me, one of the main perks of joining the club is enjoying a quiet meal by the sea, watching the waves lap by and admiring the twinkling city lights from a distance. Its an ethereal experience which is fast becoming extinct in this increasingly urban citystate.

Unfortunately, because of the club's obscure location, most restaurants seldom make it past their first year in business.

Enter Soul Waterfront- a daring venture by the Amici group. The cafe serve Western and Italian dishes, with some Asian dishes like Mee Siam and Laksa thrown in for good measure.

After 3 visits (twice for dinner and once for snacks) there, Hubby and I have decided to write off the place.

Let's start with the good stuff first. The chef seems to possess reasonable skill in preparing meat and Italian dishes. If you are a meat lover, do consider ordering the braised lamb shank, which comes in a hearty portion and melts nicely in the mouth. Although this dish is one of the highest priced items in the menu (over 30 bucks), we feel it is money well spent. Hubby also tried the cabonara and thought it to be above average.

The Asian items however pale in comparison to their Western counterparts. Particularly (un)memorable was the restaurant's laksa, which was a starchy mess of yellow noodles married with chokingly rich gravy. The dried mee siam fared slightly better, boasting a pleasurable wok hei flavor. The stale prawns in the dish however made me lose my appetite halfway into the meal.

As if it couldn't get any worse, we decided to give the place another shot and popped in on a lazy weekend afternoon for a mid day snack. We ordered a fisherman's basket to share and were appalled when the order arrived. The assorted pieces of battered calamari, onion rings, fries and fish slices stank of stale oil and sported an unhealthy looking brownish yellow hue. This is a perfect case of a simple dish gone wrong. If the restaurant doesn't care enough about the health of its patrons, then it is not a restaurant worth patronising. Even after dousing the dubious looking suspects in thick Maggi chilli sauce, hubby and I still couldn't bring ourselves to finish this dish.

Bad food is occasionally salvaged by good service. Not in this case. Service was painfully slow. Our food easily took at least 30 mins to arrive even though there were no other patrons (except us) in plain sight. Staff seemed rather incompetent and did not seem to care about the grotty floors. In all our visits, there was always more than one item "not available" in the menu, which was a little frustrating.

I'm not sure how long this restaurant will last. In any case, this is not one restaurant whose soul I will miss.