When does service become over service and when does that all become bad service. When you visit Aspara in Danang. For some reason al the staff had the longest faces, and were not very happy, either by being there or just in general, we were not sure. From the minute we walked in through the gates, we were getting funny looks off the staff. This I normally take as they either do not like foreigners as we do not speak their language, or we are not dressed to their standards. Tonite however, it must have been the former as we were looking pretty smart.
I had heard about this place and heard only good reviews about the food, so we wanted to give it a try. It prides itself on it's Champa roots, so all the dishes, mainly seafood, are Champa based. There is even a small Champa Temple in the garden as you walk in. All very atmospheric.
We were seated and given some menu's and immediately asked what we wanted to drink and order before we had even a chance to open the menu's. I guess they were just keen. The menu is vast, so this took us some time to go through, much to the annoyance of the waiters and waitresses, who kept wanting to take our order. We ordered a couple of drinks, just to keep them happy. We then scanned through the menu again, whilst we waited for our drinks. We decided on some salad rolls and some pork wrapped in shrimp paste and grilled for starters, and a Hot Pot with Fish Tien Sa Style. (Could not find out what Tien Sa was, or is, only that it was not spicy).
The atmosphere made by the staff was over bearing. Our waitress who had a face like she was chewing a bee, she insisted on making our pork, shrimp rolls for us, we could have done it ourselves, but hers were better, and I have never seen anyone roll something before with chopstix. Impressive. As we were eating, she would wander over and rearrange our table, just to make everything look perfect. This really got on my nerves, as she put everything just out of range. So I had to move my drink and dipping sauces closer. Grrrrr ...
Then came our hotpot, which she obviously didn't trust us to do it properly ourselves, so she did it for us behind our table. No matter what protests we made, we were ignored. Surprising she didn't eat it for us also.
I have to say though, the food was really really good, just a shame that the over service was too much and really let the place down. Needless to say we didn't tip anything, which I think they were kinda surprised at, as their faces when they saw this were quite shocked.
A tip for them. Smile.
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