@ December 24, 2020
Jade Ouyang
If I had known the service in this place would be so abysmal, I would never have stayed on to eat. I visited only because there was a vintage flea market going on, and that we could exchange our entry cover charge for food/drink. I will start from the beginning. Firstly, we were told we couldn't take pictures/videos of the place by the bouncer, which I thought was weird, but I later figured out possibly why the next day when a friend sent me an article that Cherry Diner had previously come under fire for telling their waitresses not to wear masks when serving the customers.
My friend and I ordered a pizza at 7:31pm, as shown in the photo attached. You can see on the timestamp that the photo was taken at 8:33pm. Our food would not arrive until 8:46pm, just a minute after I posted the instagram story attached to this review. We were told that they had burnt the pizza the first round. So it took them exactly 1hr 15mins to serve us.
The waitresses were inexperienced and poorly trained. They tried to be as nice as possible, and apologised for the delay in the food but a complete lack of training was evident. All the staff--- bartender, bouncer, waitresses, also all used their phones while on the job, in full view of the customers. Perhaps there are more lax rules regarding the usage of phones while on the job, but I thought this was very strange, having been in the F&B/Service line before.
We would understand if the kitchen was shorthanded, or if they came down to offer as options of changing orders the way other establishments do if there is such a huge delay in serving food, but no one ever did. We had to physically get off our seats to look for a waitress multiple times to ask what was going on with our food. If we hadn't already paid, we might have left instead of waiting.
The other thing is, I noticed there were several people who were not wearing masks throughout the entire duration we were there. There were at least 2 guys who hung around the bar who did not wear masks. I figured they might have been the owners or someone with a stake in the business. The waitress who took our order also was not wearing a mask when she took our order, and continued like this for at least another 15-20mins. She eventually did put it on, but the way she took off or put on her mask was very random, certainly not because she was eating or drinking as she was on the job. She also placed our cutlery on the table, without serviettes, said she would get serviettes, and never came back. Not sure how anyone with common sense in the F&B/Service line thinks this is appropriate/hygienic to place cutlery directly on the table without serviettes, but sure. You can see from the photo attached that I ended up placing the fork on the receipt instead.
The next day, after recounting this experience to a friend, they sent me the article about Cherry previously coming under fire for telling their waitresses not to wear masks. It was then that I realised they probably didn't want people to upload pictures on social media of their extremely lax and flagrant flouting of social distancing measures and mask wearing. In cinemas, when patrons take down their masks for no good reason (eating/drinking), staff are supposed to regulate and remind them to put them on again. However, there was none of that here as diners/patrons were free to not wear their masks for as long as possible, even when they were not eating/drinking.
I don't regret visiting Cherry Diner, it was certainly an experience. What I do regret is not documenting the experience with more photos/receipts for this review.
