No Signboard Seafood Review - Are you sure?

This is probably the worst experience we've had primarily in terms of service. Read on if you want to know why.

No Signboard Seafood(Vivo City branch) serves, yes you got it right, seafood! They are known to serve the famous Singapore Chili Crabs.

1. Food

Singapore Chili Crabs
I'll be honest with you. I feel that the Chili Crabs are overrated! I'm not saying that they're not good, but I didn't understand the hype about it.

There's no denying that the crabs were huge and good quality. But the chili sauce, it's just normal. It's sweet and spicy, but still normal. In fact, I do prefer the White Pepper Crabs over the Chili Crabs.

Crispy Cereal Prawns
This dish is like tempura but uses cereal as coating. The cereal is quite sweet which I felt kind of overpowers the flavor of the shrimp.

One thing I don't understand is how they prepared the shrimp. What's wrong with the preparation: nobody bothered to deshell the shrimps! Which means that after you deshell the shrimp (on your own), you end up removing the coating as well! Sheesh, you're not a hawker stall! We pay good money and don't have time to deshell the shrimp?

The rest of the food are so-so. Large servings but nothing special.

2. Ambiance
At least for Vivo City, the place looks a bit more to the high-end fine dining setting.

The place has dark wood furniture and white linen which make it look clean and formal.

You'll notice that there is a hierarchy in personnel. There are waiters and there are cleaners/servers. The waiters are the English speakers who will be taking your orders. The cleaners/servers are the non-English speakers and are mainly Chinese. So if ever you need to get something and you don't speak Chinese, you need to ask the waiters.

3. Service
This is where this review gets very interesting. It's our first time to eat here.

We went in as a group of 6 people, got our seats immediately because there was no queue and then checked out the menu.

Their set menus looked the same as their competitor, Jumbo Seafood. We expected the servings to be big so instead of ordering the "set menu for 6", we decided to order a "set menu for 4" plus order a few more on the side.

So comes Mr. Waiter ready to take our order. So I told him, "We'll order the set menu for 4 and then.."

"Are you sure?", he interrupts with a boggled face, counts our heads as if mocking me for not knowing how to count. "There are six of you!"

"Yes, I know," I answered back with a bit of irritation. "That's why we plan to order some more."

Mr. Waiter is silenced.

Then with the set of 4 menu, I added another crab set and the crispy cereal shrimp. Now, the set menu had noodles with it, but being Filipinos who mainly eat rice, we decided to have a small order of fried rice.

"Are you sure?" Mr. Waiter blurted out again. "You already have noodles and you still want rice?"

"Uh, yes?" I was already trying to control myself.

In my mind, I was thinking WTF is wrong with this guy? First, he interrupts me for not ordering enough. Now that we're ordering more, he's stopping me? Seriously, what does this guy want?

Finally, we settled our orders and I finally get to relax. Some of us ordered some drinks while the rest just wanted water.

"Are you sure you want water?" Mr. Waiter blurted out. "Would you like to have soft drinks instead?"

Yes, I simply couldn't believe it.

4. Price
Objectively, their prices are slightly more expensive than Jumbo Seafood.

Personally speaking, with that very irritating service, I say it was a waste of money! You came in to pay for good food and leave the restaurant happy. Why would anyone want to pay to get themselves irritated!?

Final Verdict:
A simple answer, "NO". To Mr. Waiter, "Yes, I'm sure it's a NO!"

Just an advise to restaurants. Please please please teach your personnel proper manners! They are the people who face your customers, not the cook, not the accountant, not the dishwasher! If they don't make a good impression to your customers, then it reflects the kind of restaurant you have.

It doesn't matter if your food is good. Service is also your product! If all we wanted was good food, we could have just went to the hawker center.



So to those reading this, leave a comment if you've encountered the same thing whether in the same restaurant or not.

Also, leave a comment if you disagree that the Singapore Chili Crabs are overrated. Let us know where we can find the best chili crabs so we can check it out too.

Btw, sorry for the lack of pictures. I wasn't in the mood.

Thanks!
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