Of course, we all have our own favorite restaurants but sometimes, we just want to try something new, right? So for this year's Valentine's Day dinner, we decided to visit Cotton restaurant at East Coast Park.
Cotton Restaurant
902 East Coast Parkway
Block E #01-26
Playground @ Big Splash
Tel +65 63482126
Sun - Thu : 5:00 pm - 12:00 am
Fri - Sat : 5:00 pm - 3:00 am
Since it opens till 3:00 am on Fridays and Saturdays, you can just chill there till late, without having to worry about being "chased out". Plus, the band EJS plays there every Fridays and Saturdays from 7:30 pm to 10:30 pm. I have never listened to them till this weekend but they were great! The song selection was pretty good too, with the likes of "For The First Time" and "Get Lucky". With the cooling sea breeze, amazing band and specious alfresco dining area, this is definitely a great place to chill out. It's better than Timbre which is too packed and crowded nowadays.
However, the good things about this restaurant end around here. Before I share what I thought of our dining experience at Cotton, let me just share what really happened during our meal. Below times are accurate within + or - 5 minutes.
08:30 pm We reached 30 min earlier than our reservation so we waited at the bar.
09:00 pm Our reservation time
09:30 pm We were finally led to a table, we ordered within 5 min after seated
10:20 pm First course appetizer was served, together with a glass of water each
10:45 pm Second course soup was served
11:15 pm Third course main dish was served
12:00 am Fourth course dessert was served
12:30 am We left the restaurant after settling the bill
As you can see, we spent a whooping 4 hours for just dinner!!! Even considering all the buffets we have been to, this was the longest time we have spent at a restaurant on one meal.
Just look at their Valentine Day menu. Only one soup and one dessert were available for that day. We were given 2 choices for appetizers and 2 for main dishes. The purpose of such a limited menu is to help the restaurant cope with a large crowd. So why did they take so long to serve us food, especially soup and dessert, each of which has just one option for diners? And water! We were served water FIFTY MINUTES after seated! Is that acceptable?
Our main arrived more than TWO HOURS after our reservation time (9:00 pm). We ordered one roasted duck and one stuffed beef fillet. But they gave us two stuffed beef fillet instead! When we asked the waiter to exchange beef to duck, we had to wait another 10 minutes. By then, we accepted the inefficiency of this place and asked for dessert. The waitress even clarified that "serve dessert now? together with the main?". And dessert came 45 mins after the main. We were A.P.P.A.L.L.E.D.
I understand that the restaurant was fully booked and the service might not be as efficient as it could be. However, they should at least be apologetic that our dining experience wasn't so good, especially on such a special day. We did not even get a single "sorry". Was that because we did not make noise? Must we be so-called 'bad customers' and make so much noise before we are deemed, deserving of an apology?
Shall we move on to food?
- Both appetizers were decent, although not very impressive.
- Soup was a bit too salty and not as hot as it should be.
- Fries were cold too. But the smaller pieces were crispy so its not too bad?
- Asparagus were overdone! They were not even that green. It was grilled and not chewy.
- The only delicious food of the night was beef - It was tender and flavorful.
- I didn't really enjoy roasted duck as it tasted sweet to me due to cherry sauce. But Mister found it quite decent.
- There were too much syrup in the dessert and the end result was artificial taste.
- Vanilla ice-cream was too ordinary and it was not even as good as Ben & Jerry tubs that we can buy from supermarkets.
After such a disastrous Valentine's Day dinner which cost us more than 200 SGD for 2 people, I was curious about what others thought of this place. But I couldn't find a review on Cotton. It turned out that this place is used to be called "1 TwentySix Restaurant". So I'm not sure if the owners change or it was just a name change. Several online reviews (Trip Advisor, Hungry Go Where) shared during 2013 & 2014 were mostly negative and I felt stupid for not reading up on these reviews before making reservations at Cotton. I was lucky that we did not need to use the washrooms. Based on the reviews, the toilets are so dirty and unhygienic too.
I still can't believe that we experienced bad food, inefficiency, bad customer service for a meal which cost us more than 100 SGD per pax. At 1 Altitude, one main is 40 SGD ++ but the food tastes amazing and the waiters are so attentive. Seriously, we could have gotten a much better deal elsewhere at the same price of more than 100 SGD per pax for a meal.
My recommendation? Don't Go to Cotton.
Adios
xoxo
Miss N
Dear Miss Nandar,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your feedback about your visit to Cotton @ Big Splash
We are equally disappointed that you had an unpleasant visit and experience at Cotton. I'd like to take this opportunity to first apologise for the poor service that you and your guest had received on Valentine's Day.
Cotton goes through great lengths to ensure that all our staff provides excellent customer service through training and daily feedbacks. We do this so our staff recognizes and maintains our high standard of service. It was unfortunate that the level of service that you had received was not indicative of our objections.
With regards to your visit on Valentine's Day, we did experience a few set backs that affected our kitchen and service efficiency and we sincerely apologize for that. One of the main reasons was late show ups for our first seatings which pushed back our second seatings and subsequently backed up our kitchen orders. It isn't any excuse, and we take full responsibility for the wait you had experienced.
Miss Nandar, although we cannot make up for the recent experience you had at our restaurant, we do ask that you will give us an opportunity for us to let you experience our full dining experience at Cotton on us!
By no means does this invitation take away from your previous experience but I hope that you will regard us as a food & beverage company that is dedicated to providing the best possible service to all our customers.
Please let me know when I can set up a dinner for two, for you and a guest at Cotton @ Big Splash. I ensure that you will have a vastly improved dining experience with us thus forth.
On behalf of Cotton @ Big Splash, I do apologize once again and am sure your next experience at Cotton will be a pleasant one.
Thank you and best regards,
Stephanie @ CottonSG
(hello@cottonsg.com)