I used to be a customer with Kowloon. Used to.
I have been going there every time I came to Aarhus, I have brought friends, sometimes parties of 5 people or more. And when the food is good, it's good. But the service I got last time was enough that I will never set foot there again.
I went to Kowloon when I was shopping for Christmas presents. I had looked forward to eating good food, because truth be told, when the food is good it's good - although the meat on the noodle dishes is usually dry.
But this time, I ordered a delicious-looking dish. What came to me was almost black from overuse of soy. Furthermore, the food tasted very distinctly burnt. I didn't even get through half before I had to admit that I could not eat this food. But I asked my friend to taste it to be sure it wasn't just because I didn't like the food, and she said the same as me. This food was inedible.
And this can happen. Anyone can add too much of something, anyone can be unaware that something has burnt that will then transfer a poor taste to the next food. This is no disaster, just take the dish back and serve a new one. I totally understand that no one is perfect. So I went to the counter to tell them.
First things first, not a single one of the people at work that day understood enough Danish or English to communicate. I said that the food tasted burnt and wasn't good and she tried to put the food in a leftover box. I had to gesture no and repeat multiple times that the food was bad. She had to get her colleagues from the kitchen to try and understand. After repeating myself slowly multiple times, they talked among themselves, the cook came out, poked at my food with my cutlery and said the vegetables weren't burnt so my food was fine. Then they refused to serve me a new dish.
To be clear, I am a fat guy. I am not picky. I have been known to eat food that truth be told should have been discarded for being poor tasting, including a dish I had over-salted by accident. Despite being close to all-eating, I could not eat this. I left over half a plate of food. Let that sink in for a moment. Yet they refused to take it back and didn't even taste it.
So I paid for a meal I was totally unable to eat. I left there in a foul mood, feeling ripped off and treated terribly. But despite all my instincts shouting at me that I should not pay for something completely inedible, I still paid and left. And I won't be coming back. Because when I took this up, the "PR" person, Jørgen, didn't even pretend to address my claim, he just made a snide comment about how I cited the wrong price for my food(because I had included the price of water as a total price in my review). So bad food, terrible service, terrible followup.
If I can't trust that a restaurant will take responsibility when they make mistakes, I would rather spend my money at one of the hundreds of other places to eat in the city. read more