Ivins Peranakan Restaurant vs Al-Azhar

I could not resist the temptation to place a foot note on Ivins Peranakan Restaurant and Al-Azhar. Sure, this may not be a fair comparison. Ivins serves Peranakan food whilst Al-Azhar serves Malay/ Indian/ Thai/ Chindian food. What can I compare?

Ivins is a no-frills restaurant in an air-conditioned setting, with very cost-effective pricing for customers. They have a big variety of dishes available, i.e. ayam buah keluak, ayam pongteh, gado gado, bakwan kepiting, pretty authentic. You can get to order ayam buah keluak for a budgetary pricing of about SG$6. Cucumber with sambal is probably at SG$3. Dessert such as my all time favourite, Gula Melaka Sago, is at SG$1.20. The good news is, GST is waived too.

Al-Azhar is a real hangout place. It opens till late at night. I cannot recall how late it opens. It serves anything Malay/ Indian/ Chindian under the sun. You have all sorts of paratha, butter/ cheese/ garlic, naan, panggang fish, North and South Indian curries. On top of that, you even can get Nasi Paprik, Nasi Pattaya and Tom Yum. I spotted a customer eating Chinese style Hokkien Mee. One is spoilt for choices and food is pretty tasty and at pretty affordable prices.

Ivin's wait staff is dressed in their signature (batik) shirt and in other words, they do have a standard code of dressing. They are young, most of them Singaporeans, perhaps one or two are Filipinos. In fact, most of them are students with nice wholesome features. The oldest wait staff was their Manager, definitely the oldest among all. They speak proficient English.

Al-Azhar wait staff are mostly Indians/ Malays and mostly foreigners, (I believe), not really the best-dressed around. However, they do carry PDAs to take your orders. They may not look extremely educated and do speak with a slight twang of slang.

My, my, when it comes to Service, I can't say how badly Ivin's wait staff is trained. The wait staff avoid all possible eye contacts with customers. We waited at least 15 minutes for our orders to be taken down. It was finally taken down when we raised our voice to the waiter. Other customers were facing the same problem too. Definitely such a big disappointment on the attentiveness of the wait staff. Drinks were only served after our meal. The dessert failed to come despite the first reminder.

A-Azhar is completely different. Orders are taken down fast. Mostly importantly, wait staff makes eye contact. Never pretends not to see the customers waving their hands or calling them over.

The basic respect of looking at a person is not even there. Are youngsters nowadays too proud of themselves? What happened to education and proper upbringing? Sure, this may not be applicable to all youngters. But just prepared for the bad and disappointing service at Ivins.