So last week I went with friends to Mela on William St for the first time. It was pretty rad - tasty food, not terrible service, not cheap but not too pricey. All in all I came home feeling pretty pleased.
So pleased, in fact, that I suggested to my family that we go this week! My brother lives like two blocks away from William St and my grandfather is staying with us so we all thought it would be nice to grab something to eat in Northbridge. We eventually decide on Mela because I had such a nice experience there last time, and we thought it would be quieter (my grandfather has hearing problems) than somewhere like Viet Hoa.
How wrong we were! We were seated at a table that was so unbearably noisy it was ridiculous. It was probably just because there was a large table nearby with children, but this was insane. I was pretty uncomfortable, and I spend a reasonable amount of time at gigs and so on. Then the waitress came to take our order, and wasn't really all that pleasant. She wasn't at a Moon/Greenhouse level of rudeness but she didn't make much of an effort. I thought it might have been because we weren't sure what we wanted and my mother was asking questions about how mild certain dishes were (neither she or her father can have super hot food) but it didn't really warrant her unpleasantness. We probably would have forgotten about it, but...
Our food took forever to arrive. Like, over half an hour of waiting. As well as that, I randomly got my samosa (which we had asked to have delivered with the rest of the food as I was the only person who wanted one) like 20 minutes beforehand. So I just ate my samosa by myself and gave little tidbits to my brother and dad. Eventually my dad got so frustrated with the noise and waiting that he had to wait outside where it was quieter, and in the meantime my mum asked for us to be moved to a quieter table. You'd think then they'd notice that actually we haven't got our food yet, but even after moving we still didn't get our food for ages, and then we didn't get our garlic naan until we were mostly through our meals (it was misplaced twice). Plus, the table next to us arrived at least 15 minutes after us and were halfway through their meals by the time we moved to another table.
All this was compounded by the fact I was out until 4 this morning and just about falling asleep at the table, my brother was working all day and ready to go to bed, my dad gets grumpy at bad service really quickly and my grandfather couldn't hear anything so he was constantly asking "What was that?! Can you repeat that?!". And the lamb korma (I can't vouch for this as I don't eat meat) was apparently awful!
Not an entirely pleasant evening! My Indian options are beginning to dwindle - I've been put off Mela by tonight's performance and Maya Masala has been pretty terrible in the past in terms of service - last time I was there I found a shard of plastic in my naan and wasn't really given a satisfactory response from the staff, and my brother went again last week and was treated ridiculously (like, ridiculoudly) poorly by who he thought was the manager/owner.
What is up with this, Perth?! I know hipster service has sucked for a while but what is up with these places getting in on the act?!
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