Sapore – revisited

Having attended and blogged about the opening of Sapore lifestyle bar and cafe at City Hall, it was definitely of interest that my friend and I would revisit the place to eat Gnocchi and check how much of the promised is kept on an everyday base. A light dilemma was the result of our visits. We both came out with different treatment and levels of satisfaction or dissatisfaction, and we both realized pros and cons of the new place.
My friend went alone for a lunchtime set meal. He was all in all disappointed on most levels. His positive points were the good fresh free bread while waiting for the menu, and the taste of the food itself. However, sold as a set meal, the treat included merely a small portion of Gnocchi and on the same plate a small green salad without dressing. Complimentary was only a glass of plain water. This all for the price of 20$. After this lunch, he needed to go somewhere else to eat again and satisfy his hunger. Advertising with credit card payment facilities, the card machine was reportedly not working that day, forcing my friend to pay cash. However, few days later, he found two bookings from the restaurant on his creditcard bill, not over the real charge but a wrong amount (komma slipped to the left 2 digits). Imagine this happens with your credit card and the comma slips to the right, and u get charged twice 2000$ instead of 20$, and this after you had paid cash already. Makes us also wonder, how can the credit card machine get access to my friend´s account without any receipt or without him signing? I think, if this was about more money, it could be quite a dirty case.
I went a few days later for a dinner with my lady friend, who is known in the restaurant as frequent customer. She had also informed the restaurant of the complaints of my friend. No wonder, our treatment was then much better. The Italian waiter would have done probably anything to keep her happy; we got deserts for free, he was pretty good in suggesting the correct wine. I realized, that on the menu for the set meal, they have added an additional coffee. Now, I am a Gnocchi fan, and i haven’t found a place in Singapore with good Gnocchi... and there they were....really wonderful Gnocchi. The taste was great. Yet, I have to agree with my friend, a small portion of Gnocchi and salad beside it on the same plate doesn’t make up for a set meal ... for a meal i would expect 3 things...a starter, main, and desert or coffee. Yes, they added coffee...but what happened? I asked for the coffee to come first, but the coffee did not come at all. Only when we went out of the restaurant we realized, we had a bottle of wine, but we never got the complimentary coffee. However, the waiter, trying to keep my lady friend happy, brought free desert.
Discussing with my friend about the value for money issue, I learnt about the fact that a bar in City Hall is just higher end, higher price, and that the prices reflect hotel prices of fine dining. I m not a cheapo, i understand that, however, I also understand that for fine dining level, the restaurant has to live up to that level first before demanding to be treated as fine dining place by the customer. A fine dining place would have nicely designed menus instead of here A4 photocopies in a school-kid folder, staff with the correct middle way between being attentative and not dominating, portions that satisfy, and no punking with payment issues.
So now we have a dilemma: finally i found very nice Gnocchi, but at fine dining prices at a place that does not yet live up to the level of fine dining. What to do? Ask for the special price of take-away Gnocchi? Learn to make Gnocchi myself?
Whereas my friend has put Sapore on his ristaurante non grata list, i will try it again after a while, because I always believe in the chance to improve.