Steakology, Inc.

This is a long overdue post because I visited this restaurant during Ramadan last year. I bought the voucher for 6 person, so I got 6 main courses, 3 snacks and 6 drinks; altogether only for IDR 129K including tax. It was a good deal so, why not?

The place was considered new that time, and the photos looked tempting. They required us to make reservation before visiting, which I did precisely 7 days before. The staff told me that he noted that already and asked me to reconfirm the reservation once again 1 day before my visit. I wasn’t too happy with this rule, though, but I did it. One day before my visit, I called again and the staff said there was no reservation made under my name, and he suggested to just come to the restaurant whenever I want, because they couldn’t take reservation during Ramadan. @_@

The next day, 6 of us went there after being lost so many times (it wasn’t easy to find the place!), and when we got there, it wasn’t full but some tables were occupied by large groups of people, and that wasn’t even fasting-break (buka puasa) time already. One of the staffs approached us and when I said I wanted to redeem my voucher, he immediately said that I HAD TO make reservation first, otherwise I can’t use the voucher. I told him what the other staff said in the phone yesterday and he still refused to give us a table and left us just like he had no business anymore! And if it was full, I would totally understand, but there were some unoccupied tables but he just didn’t want to give any to us because he wanted to keep those available for regular customers, not voucher users. What the hell, right?!?! I was so pissed and ready to walk out but luckily there was this guy (who happened to be one of the shareholders/owners) who was grilling the steak, came and asked us to sit on the table in the front porch, just beside the gas griller where he was working at. Bless him, really.

After the impolite treatment that we experienced in the beginning, I didn’t really want that to ruin my mood, so we immediately made orders. First was the snacks, actually we could choose 3 from the selections of: beef/chicken strips, French fries, chicken wings, beef/cheese tofu, cheese/beef risoles, or fish and chips; but again, the staff told us that they had NOTHING available at that moment, and they offered NACHOS for replacement. We weren’t sure but had no choice, and it was a total nightmare when it came, the “nachos” is no other than some crispy crackers!!

We tried to remain calm and made order for the main courses. We could pick 6 from the selections of: Original/Double Beef Burger, Cheese Burger, Double Cheese Burger, Original Chicken Burger, Double Chicken Burger, Pasta Creamy Mushroom, Pasta Sexy Rattlesnake, Pasta Pesto Herbs, Tasty Aglio Olio, Pasta Sambal Matah, Pasta Sweet BBQ, Pasta Sambal Ijo. We ordered 4 burgers and 2 pasta because that’s the point of coming here, right? For the meat, I mean. Some minutes later, the staff came back to our table and told us that we should change our burger orders to pasta because they RAN OUT OF BURGER BUNS STOCK. I mean, hello? I knew it didn’t only piss me off, but the way the staff talked to us really made me want to strangle him right away. He was just, terrible. There was no apology, nothing. And I just told him to cancel all our orders right away or let me talk to the manager. The staff went back inside, and sometimes later, he informed us that they STILL HAD STOCKS for the burger buns and we didn’t need to change our orders. How ridiculous is that, really? It was probably another stupid scheme by restaurants which offer vouchers but doing their business in dirty way. Seriously, just stop it, it’s a shame for your restaurant, and you’ll not get returning customers, period.

Honestly, by the time our food arrived, our appetite had gone so low and we really didn’t expect much. Apparently, this restaurant claims to have a very nice sauce, called “7 Wonder Sauce”, but seriously, they should consider renaming that because they’re very far from “wonder” or anything near that. Hey, they all taste almost similar one to the others, and I think it’s so exaggerated.

Frankly, it was hard for me not to enjoy any food in a restaurant so we decided to try their steak, which probably could help my impression about this restaurant. 

And turned out it was quite delicious! The steak especially, it was well cooked, we asked for medium-well and it was just perfect for us. The meat was quite thick, the sauce was a bit watery but still nice. 

From what I read, this restaurant is owned by Tantri of Kotak (Indonesian popular music group) and some news anchors of Metro TV. The whole concept is good, though, but I think they might need lots of improvements especially the management and staff training. Although my review for my first visit is quite bad, maybe I would go there again to try more of their menu without vouchers.