A few weeks back, my husband and I went for a drive around Putrajaya just looking at sceneries and houses. It was quite late when we ended up in Cyberjaya and decided to have our dinner there. There were a lot of restaurants offering Arabic food in Cyberjaya and we decided to dine at Saba Restaurant (mainly because there were a lot of customers there and so we thought the food must be great to make the restaurant flocked with hungry people).
The Saba Restaurant at night.
The restaurant's name and logo is on the long fluorescent-lighted signboard,
couldn't be captured with my lil' old camera phone.
The ambience of the restaurant from outside looked promising and warm. Inside the restaurant was just like any other food court with the tables and chairs arranged quite close together. We chose to sit at a table nearest to the counter. We had to wait for quite a while to get the attention of a waiter so that he could give us the menus (already a sore point for me as I was quite hungry). The waiter also had some trouble understanding my questions about the cuisines offered in the menu making me quite frustrated being deprived of sufficient information prior to ordering. I wanted to try something like naan and gravy but the breads in Saba Restaurant are only sold as breads without any gravy or dip together with it. So, in the end I decided to order the Rashush Bread and Fool Medammas for dipping. My husband ordered Chicken Kebab. For drinks we weren't feeling too adventurous so we just ordered Teh Tarik and Iced Horlicks.
After the waiter had taken our order, it was another waiting game that we had to play since our orders came quite late (another sore point!). As we wait, we could see that quite a number of patrons were still waiting to get their food as well.. Hmm.. not a very good sign.. Our drinks arrived first so we just sat there, sipping our drinks moderately as not to finish them before our food came. The dishes did arrive some time later but in stages.
Our drinks. The top is Teh Tarik, bottom is Iced Horlicks.
The first dish to arrive was the Fool Medammas which is actually an Egyptian bean stew. It tasted not like the usual dhall curry complimenting naan bread but more to herbal and a little bit salty with a hint of spiciness (not too spicy, just a hint) and sourness to it. It was quite all right to dip the bread with.
Fool Medammas.
Next to arrive was the bread in plastic wrapping. The waiter just plopped the bread on our table and left without any explanation whatsoever. We assumed it was the Rashush Bread. I was quite perplexed as of why was the bread not served on a plate? It was quite troublesome to eat out of the plastic wrapping. The bread was actually just plain ol' pitta bread. We ate it with the Fool Medammas.
My husband's Chicken Kebab came next. It was served with half a slice of pitta bread (so much pitta bread!), a stalk of green chilly, half a slice of tomato, a slice of lemon and dollop of mayonnaise and chilli sauce on the side. I think there was capsicum too under the spoon. The chicken was more like chicken fried fritters than a kebab. It tasted just okay and nothing to shout about.
Chicken Kebab is hidden under the fries.
My husband is showing the billing card.
So, all in all, our dinner looked like this:
Whoopss.. my hubby is trying to leave the table.
Since there was pitta bread aplenty on the table, we tried our best to finish at least one serving of the plastic-wrapped bread. It was quite a challenge because I am a very light eater and the bread is quite filling. After we had had enough and threw in the towel, suddenly the waiter came and brought us a plate of a very large bread. We questioned the waiter and he told us that this is the Rashush Bread we ordered. What?!
The real Rashush Bread that came too late.
We looked at each other with blank faces. The Fool Medammas we used for dipping sauce was finished and there was this whole lot of bread sitting in front of us waiting to be eaten. In the end we called the waiter again and told him to just pack the bread in a doggy bag to go.
The total for the whole fiasco was: RM34.00.
We pondered upon the whole dining experience and on why we were given two sets of pitta bread in the first place and why the Rashush bread came so late at the end of our dinner. We actually left the unopened pitta bread because with the real Rashush bread, there was too many bread to go around.
All in all, the dining experience at Saba Restaurant was quite a let down because of the slow service, uncooperative waiters, so-so tasting food and sloooow serving of food (hence the Rashush Bread). The only interesting thing about the restaurant was their billing method which involved the card with the number. The card is needed to be presented to the cashier and all our orders are automatically calculated making it easier to be tracked and paid for. I don't think we are going back there unless there's a tremendous change in their service and food and somebody convinces us to do so.
