Whisk Cafe. Lounge @ Wisma Atria

There is a new eatery in town and it looks cutesy, whimsical. We were looking for food over at Wisma Atria and chanced upon Whisk Cafe. Lounge on Level 3. Did you realize there are not many restaurants over at Wisma at all. I think most people just go to Food Republic and maybe Din Tai Fung for food. I like the decor. The cat is sooooooo adorable. As some stores are still undergoing renovations with the boarding etc, Whisk actually has a stand with menu very near the taxi stand to let people know they are around.

Even the menu is kitschy cuteness, just like the placemat. As with every other Japanese-Western dining cafes which have sprung up, the food is predominantly Western fare with some Japanese/Asian influence. So maybe it should be considered Fusion food in a casual setting.

We were hungry but somehow the menu didn't inspire us to really order the mains. It looked boring or maybe the descriptions of the pastas, ribs, chicken didn't make us excited about trying the dishes. So D and I shared the caesar salad. The soup we wanted was not available (chicken with corn soup). The caesar salad was surprisingly good. The dressing was just nice, not overly drenched and the hard boiled egg was a nice touch. Bacon could be a bit crisper and the cherry tomatoes lent a sweet tartness to the creamy lettuce.

C ordered the smoked salmon with ebiko (? or some fish roe thing) sandwich which came with a side of fries. It took a while to arrive but when it did, it was worth waiting for. The fries were freshly fried and was warm and crispy though it was a bit too salty. The smoked salmon with the fish roe was nice too. We polished off the entire dish.

A's order finally arrived. It took the longest to be served. She had the tandoori chicken salad with dill or mint yoghurt sauce or something. The tandoori was moist and not dry so thumbs up to Whisk for making a good tandoori chicken and the dressing went very well with the greens.

Service. The service was disappointing and practically non-existant. First we were shown to a table with four chairs even though the outer 2 chairs were jutting out of the table. Meaning - table was too small to accommodate 4 chairs. Why we were given that table, I have no idea.

So we requested to be moved to another table which could seat 4 comfortably. Menus were given and water was topped up frequently without us asking. That was good. But...we were not given any cutlery or napkins even when our food arrived. When we asked for side plates, one was dirty. We requested for a new one and it took a long time for them to give us one.

There were at least 7 servers milling around and the restaurant was not full. Maybe about 50% or less were occupied. The service marred the entire dining experience.

Then I found out they had only just opened the day before. So ok, this is teething problem in training the staff to observe the diners and their tables. There are 2 ways to look at it. One is you are new and so your service should be impeccable to wow the diners. The other is that to cut them some slack while they fine-tuned their service delivery.

I think I will go back again in a couple of months time when they should be better in their service. The food is pretty decent which helps to pull me back there again to try the other dishes.