Rosemary...Reaaaally Bites.

Went to have lunch at this little cafe called Rosemary Bites yesterday. Located in Aman Suria, it was surprisingly easy to find as it was one of the shops facing the main road. I'd been wanting to try this place out for a few days, ever since I visited their website. The website certainly looked good enough to eat. But I was about to find out that looks aren't everything...

This was taken during midday, but I was too lazy to figure out the proper setting to use, so it looks like twilight in this photo. :P

The place looked decent enough, and I was looking forward to a delicious lunch. We went inside and it looked like your typical cafe/bistro (unfortunately no smoking area, though I know some people would find that to be a good thing).

The waiter then provided us with the regular and set lunch menus. The regular menu looked good, clean and concise, but we were there to try the lunch set, which consisted of pasta, chicken and fish, each with 3 different types of sauces, and a free ice lemon tea. We both ordered the fish and chips. I chose the one with dijon mustard & honey sauce, and Nic opted for the pineapple salsa.

Unique way of doing a set lunch menu...

Then the drinks arrived. Just your regular ice lemon tea. So far, everything was going well.

It was nice ice lemon tea.

However, that was as good as it got that day. Everything that came after that seemed disastrous. The next thing that came was the mushroom soup. The texture wasn't too bad, but it was TOO SALTY! And we weren't the only table to think so. Diners at another table even asked for some hot water to add into it.

The soup of the day - Salt-room soup.

After that, the bruschetta arrived. It was the oddest bruschetta I'd ever seen. The bread was twice as thick as any other bruschetta I'd ever had before. That would've still been alright, except for the fact that it also smelled weird. Like, a really stale sort of smell.

We kept sniffing different parts of the bruschetta, trying to figure out where the smell came from. At first we thought it was the bread, then we thought it was the cheese. Finally we gave up and drenched it in the soup because it neutralized the salty taste of the soup, and killed the unappetizing smell of the bruschetta.

Smelly bruschetta...

Shortly after the bruschetta fiasco, we were looking forward for our main courses. Then the waiter and the chef (presumably the boss) comes up to our table and informs us that Nic's pineapple salsa sauce wasn't available, and suggested she choose the dijon mustard & honey. As she wasn't interested in the other sauces, I asked if we could change her order to the Sirloin Lasagna instead.

When the waiter looked at the chef to check, the chef said that only the set lunches were available during lunch time, and the à la carte main course items were only available during dinner time. Now, if that was the case, why were we not informed earlier? What if I had wanted to choose something from the main course instead? Wouldn't that have been a waste of time?

So Nic reluctantly chose the lemon butter sauce, and the chef said he'd give her both the dijon sauce as well as the lemon butter sauce to try. Not 5 minutes later, we were astonished when our main courses arrived. It was impossible that they had been cooked in such a short time, which meant that the fish had already been prepared/cooked before they discovered that the pineapple salsa sauce was unavailable.

As a result, it seemed to me that because the fish had already been prepared, they didn't want us to order anything else. In any case, that incident left a bad taste in my mouth even before I started eating my main course...which was another salty horror. Was there a clearance sale being held in a salt factory or something?

This was my plate...Nic's had 2 sauces on it, but basically looked the same.

The only things that tasted good from the main course were the sauces and the side dishes. The vinaigrette topping on the salad was just nice and not too sour (but soooooo little of it! They only gave a few drops!), the chips weren't too salty (thank goodness!) and the  lemon butter and dijon mustard & honey sauces were pretty good. The only thing that was almost inedible...was the fish itself. Oh it certainly looked good enough to eat. The breading was crispy and just the right thickness, the fish was fluffy...but it was as salty as fuck. It was so salty that not only could I not finish my food, but had to order another drink because I was guzzling water like a camel after a long trip through the desert.

So Nic ordered the pink lemonade, and I ordered the rosemary lime drink. Nic's drink was pretty good, with just the right combination of tartness and sweetness.

As for mine, if you absolutely love the taste of herbs, and prefer that it overpowers the taste of...well, everything else, then you might like it. On the other hand, if you just like a hint of herbs to accent the taste of your food (or in this case, drink), like yours truly here, then I would strongly recommend not ordering this drink. Please trust me on that one piece of advice. Pick something else. Please.

Pink lemonade (left) and rosemary juice...err I mean the rosemary lime drink (right). But I wonder why there's a lemon slice in it when it's supposed to be lime? I couldn't taste any lime anyway. Just the overpowering taste of ROSEMARY!

To summarize, this restaurant has absolutely no problems with food presentation. Everything looks wonderful, especially the little sprig of rosemary floating in my drink. Unfortunately, I don't taste with my eyes.

 I think it's pretty safe to say that I'm never going back.