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| The photo used to sell our secret "Hideaway" dinner to us! |
Nick has been living in Singapore for years already, so I often imagine
that he gets a bit frustrated by the fact that I drag him along to places that
he’s already been, to eat food he’s already tried, and to wonder around
touristy places that he’s seen and is already bored of.
As such, I’ve started
to try and find pop ups and one off events for us to go to in the vague hope
that it’s a bit more exciting for him too. Sadly, this often means that I end
up dragging him along to incredibly rubbish events that we both regret pretty
much as soon as we’ve walked in. Disappointingly, this Sunday night was another
classic example of my failure to pick well.
I had been sucked in by
an advert for a one-off event featuring an award winning chef and a lot of
hype! Reservations was made without any idea where the event would be held,
other than you had to be at Little India tube station by 6:30 on the night in
question.
So it was that last
night we were at the designated entrance (just five minutes from our front door)
ready to meet up with Kev and Jules who had also been duped into the event and were
ready for an adventure.
The instructions that
were texted to us led us along the main road for around five minutes before we
cut in to the main building along the block and found ourselves at a side
entrance for a local arts and music college, joining a queue of around 50
people to get into their college café. So far, the evening wasn’t quite living
up to my secret hidden dinner in an abandoned warehouse or cool shop house (see the advertising photo above).
Still, staying positive we queued for a while as we were all shown in, issued
with passwords to get through the door, and handed a yummy rum cocktail as we
made our way to the 10-seater table that we would be sharing with a number of
other guests for the evening.
Having made friends
with out table buddies we ordered some more drinks to get the evening started
and devoured some bread while we waited for the dinner to arrive. While others
arrived and were seated, we took some time to look around the fairly sparse
venue. There were little nautical touches on the tables, and strange boat
themed items scattered here and there with the sound of waves being pumped over
the speakers. Assuming this was some sort of Heston-inspired hear what you eat
type arrangement we started to get excited about what might be about to follow.
It was only when the
waiters proved to be utterly incapable, and way too many people in fancy dress
started to mill-around “in character” that we started to get concerned.
In a nutshell, the
night was a bizarre evening on every level. Alongside our fairly mediocre
dinner there was a show acted out, with way too much audience participation and
a lot of dire drama school singing and acting taking place. The food was nice,
but absolutely nothing special, served badly, and mostly cold when it arrived.
Drinks that we ordered when we walked into the event still hadn’t been served
over an hour later, and the general atmosphere of the place was just annoying
more than anything. If there’s one thing I don’t like it’s queenie drama
students, and we were stuck relying on them to feed us for the evening.
As seems to happen a
lot in Singapore, we walked out of the event when it finally ground to a halt almost
five hours later, more certain than ever that I can’t pick good dinner for the
life of me over here, resolved to let Nick make the call on where we’ll eat in
the future.
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