My good-bye lunch

It’s end of June. The time we have set for officially closing our baby shop and ready for the hand over to the new tenant. To celebrate it, we, altogether with the staff and relatives that have been helping us, were having dinner last Thursday. And to express my gratitude, I especially invited my staff for a hearty lunch @The Square restaurant – 5^th floor of Novotel M2S. It’s near and I know that The Square has quite reputable buffet options (we frequently have our weekend brunch here). Beside, I would like to present a fabulous culinary experience for my staff (who only has all-you-can-eat experience @Hanam*s*).

Luckily, on every Friday during holiday season, The Square presents the Korean-theme buffet (they have Indonesian food for Monday, Chinese food for Tuesday, Thailand food for Wednesday, and international style buffet for every Thursday and weekend). I seldom eat Korean dishes so I felt a bit excited too (a nervous kind of excitement since I dislike eating Kimchi/Bibimbap and I considered those dishes as a national representation taste of Korean food LOL). Neither my staff, who only familiar with Indonesian and Chinese fast-food (she let me tried mine and waited for my encouragement, before she tried her own portion). Afraid of making mistake (since this was her first time eating @hotel’s restaurant), she mimicked my gesture and food selection, which after few rounds, she felt confident enough to explore the food stalls all by herself. Yet, she still left some parts untouched (especially those cold-cut on salad table).

Selection of appetizer and main dishes

There were various salad and cold-cut and condiments for appetizer. Soups, shabu2 (in tom-yum soup), and noodle in Korean style as well as combination of Asian and Korean main dishes. We started with a simple dimsum (ha-kao and steam chicken dumpling) with finger-licking-good Vietnamese sambal…yum yum. The sambal is definitely a thumb-up, perfect balance of sour and spicy (I used it for every meals I took he he he). My staff liked the dimsum a lot and promised to have another portion afterward (which was forgotten since she has stuffed herself full at the end of the course wkwkwk). I then tried the rice with tofu (basically it was a fried silken tofu with rice on top and olive as garnish). It was one of those cold dishes which didn’t suit my taste. However, I like the cold chicken roll served with raw chopped cabbage which turned out to be pretty tasty. There were must-try vegetable pancake (sort of steam vegetable in beaten egg - never tried it before anywhere else), thick and juicy Bulgogi (Korean BBQ), fragrant Korean skewers, and a yummy deep-fried minced chicken wrapped in pastry with peanut sauce (too bad, I forgot the name. It was difficult to memorize the name while you are savoring the meal).

While eating, we talked bout the last 2weeks of our closing sale (I was there @the shop from Monday-to-Friday…what a rare sight LOL). We laughed when I retold about my fav customer, which bought anything that we threw at him, not even bargained the price, as long as we kept him talking (apparently he was a very talk-active person) and did our part as active listeners. Both of us whined at the same persistent customer who was bugging us for an hour, asking for more discount from the-already-discounted-price…geezzz…I knew it wasn’t pay day yet but it was already cheap! Anymore discount then I would be digging my own wallet phewww. At the end, we gave up and agreed on his price (well, saved us time from his whining he he he).

There was this foreign customer which was all covered in black clothes (I could only see her eyes) and spoke foreign language. I kept telling her…”English, can you speak English?” While she kept chattering in her own language (I didn’t catch a word of it) and I gave up, resigned to my staff, “Arab, you can speak Arab, then speak Arab with her”. Yet, either my staff wasn’t fluent in Arabian or the customer wasn’t Arabian, all of us ended up using calculator and body language (yes, it involved a lots of hand gestures which I, myself, wasn’t sure of the meaning). And the funniest one was a woman who would like to buy certain thing but didn’t have any money with her. Since she is an electronic mobile credit seller, she asked whether she could pay us using the equivalent mobile credit. I couldn’t stop myself from laughing (literally I was almost ROFL), thinking what decade is it? Does the ancient transaction method of exchanging goods (‘barter’) still exist in this era?

Selection of desserts

Full of laughter, we turned for dessert. There were fresh fruit platter, cake and biscuit assortments, and various types of ice cream and pudding. We tried almost all of it, from the pudding to fruit, bits of snack and tidbit, and not to be forgotten, the infamous Chapssalddeok (Korean mochi) with red bean paste filling (which was so sticky and I found it hard to chew). The mochi has this nice and sweet fragrant which I couldn’t find the name of it. After 90mins, we sat there, slowly drinking our green tea…trying to digest all foods eaten. My staff grinned (maybe thinking that she wouldn’t have this kind of meal again once she set her foot on her hometown) and I grinned back, thinking it was indeed a hearty lunch. Good meals with reasonable price (I was using my LE club membership which given us 50%off for food and another 15%off for beverages)...good company, plus good laugh…could you expect more?

We parted our ways, bid our good-bye and said our thank-you and wondering when our paths would cross again in the future. Have a safe trip on your way back to Brebes and may you have a good life there.