otcotools

Shiro

Vittal Mallya Road ,Bangalore

When my guests from the USA wanted to go to a nice place for dinner, I immediately thought of Shiro's. Little did i know that it was going to be such a horrible experience dining there. We arrived at 8:45 am, 6 of us and were ushered to a table outside on the deck. Then the server disappeared and didn't return. We had to ask other servers 4-5 times to serve us water. On the fifth attempt and 20 minutes after our arrival was the water served. We ordered a few cocktails , shiro's "Signature" cocktails, amongst which was the fig imbued mojito. The drink arrived and on tasting i found my drink tasted horrible has it was filled over with ice and asked the server to give me another one as this was not good. He enquired as to what I'd like to have and asked me to choose between the same drink or a fresh mojito. I opted for a fresh mojito. 5 mins later he comes to me to tell me that i will be charged for the drink that i returned and the drink that i freshly ordered. This was shocking and i dint want to end up paying for two drinks and so i just asked him to make the fig mojito as close to a regular mojito as possible. My wife ordered the "Oriental Spice" cocktail which had eristoff vodka as an ingredient. The server returned informing her that they were out of eristoff and gave her a choice of grey goose or 42 below . She chose grey goose, and was given the cocktail soon. Meanwhile starters were ordered, arrived and served all of which was very good and relatively prompt. My drink arrived as well, and though it was a marginal improvement with less ice and more taste, it wasn't a Shiro Signature experience. We ordered 2 veg main courses - A Donburi and another veg gravy, a chicken hot pot and 2 different kinds of rice, as suggested by the server. After a long wait the food finally arrived. most of it actually. the veg dished arrived and the rice did. however after serving the rice we were asked to wait for 5 mins as the chicken gravy was not ready. When the gravy arrived, the rice was cold, and so we sent it back to be re heated. We were very irritated at this point with the service, especially since we had four waiters and not one had an idea as to what was going on. We asked the waiter for the manager and were informed that the manager was not in and gone back home. After we insisted, we were introduced to the hostess, a woman with a very foreign accent, but who clearly was not the manager. . We gave her our feedback, and she immediately asked the waiters to re heat the food and bring it back. The food was reheated but only one of the rice was hot, the other was still cold. We gave up and left our food the way it was. We asked for the cheque as we obviously were not on their priority list at the time. The cheque took another 10 mins to arrive, before which one of the waiter started placing dessert plates on our table. We hadn't ordered any dessert as we hadn't eaten any of the food. We were informed by the waiters that we were getting one dessert "on the house" for the 6 of us. How the staff at Shiros could be so presumptuous that they would want to mollify us with a dessert or just a show of "good faith" by assuming this, was beyond me. The least that could have been done was the manager asking us whether we would like dessert would have been more appropriate. Instead we got them telling us that the servers were trainees and hence it was a "miscommunication" that created the problems!! We asked for the cheque, and were presented with one. We were rather surprised to find that we were overcharged for a grey goose oriental spice, when it was the waiter who gave us the option of going in for grey goose as they were out of eristoff. Why offer and alternate brand and then charge for it?.. That was a new low set by Shiro The hostess then informed us that they would not charge for 1 rice and 1 gravy due to service fault and also gave us a "coupon" for free dinner for two as another gesture of good faith. Unfortunatley the free coupn was cleary not thought through as it was dated 1st may 2010, and was a promotion lasting upto 31st august for their "anniversary celebration". A revised bill was given to us with an added " Service charge". I pointed out that service charge was not a govt regulation but apparently its entered into their system and cannot be changed. We hadn't received good service so there wasn't really a need to pay "service charge" .. but it was a long a painful night, and more argument was not what we were looking at to end the day. We found the actual manager looking after the billing at the end of day and informed him of our dissatisfaction. Maybe it was the end of the night, or he was too busy, but he didnt seem to think that as important either! We paid. We left. Overcharged and under serviced - Shiro Bangalore needs service overhaul. about time.