Tonight was a random night where I particularly needed a night of reminisce and nostalgia. I decided to call up a close friend from my high school days who was living nearby for dinner.
She is a pretty fancy one, so I made sure to do some research for some good deals via the Eatigo app on mobile. Eatigo is a food app that usually offers discounts for selected restaurants at selected timings. I found a decent, rather fancy looking place with an affordable price and discount of 50% for an 8pm reservation at Mandala Café and Bar. I made sure to let her have a look before making reservations in case she makes a fuss later on. She picked me up and we headed to Publika Shopping Gallery where the café was located.
Parking at Publika was as confusing as ever, but still pretty abundant. We made our way up and made a bee line for the information counter located at level G2 to avoid getting lost. The helpful staff at the counter pointed us to the right direction and we made it there in no time. The café was pretty empty when we arrived. We thought perhaps it was more like a drinking place than a dinner one. The café was dimly lit and dark. It had a huge display of alcohol at the back of the café and at the bar. The furniture was all of fairly darker tones as well, while the ambience was pretty nice and chill.
They served us pretty quickly with the menu, and we decided to order two mains. The waiter seemed pretty annoyed that we did not order any drinks, so that was uncalled for. There were also a lot of flies buzzing which we did not appreciate at all. We both ordered the same dish, the soft shell crab spaghetti priced at RM19. However, the waiter misunderstood us and thought we ordered two ala carte soft shell crabs only and served it on our table.
We explained that it was the wrong one, and the waiter was VERY RUDE towards us. However, they still served us our spaghetti soon after. The presentation was that of a typical domestic housewife and the portion was pretty small too.
As for the taste, the buttermilk sauce was bland and far too milky. They also put way too much chilli flakes so all you could taste was the spices and milk. The soft shell crab was alright, but also too small. We ended up having to order plain iced water. It took us FOREVER to get the waiting staff’s attention as they were all busy chit chatting outside the café. We were pretty mad. Overall, this is a 2/10 café that we will NOT return to for dinner. Thankfully we had a discount and we only paid RM19 for two in total.
If you are looking for a place to chill (not for dinner) after hours with a low budget, the details are as below:-
Address: D3-G3-8, Solaris Dutamas, No, 1, Jalan Dutamas 1
Hours: 11AM–1AM