Sip Lounge… too many waiters bringeth confusion!

Yesterday after a lovely afternoon learning to bake cinabuns , my friends and I started looking for a good place to have dinner and nice cocktails; we ended up at Sip Lounge. We weren’t really sure if Sip had a restaurant since what we knew Sip for was its bar and club. We enquired at the café beneath and were told that it had a restaurant. We went right up.

We were welcomed by many waiters (about 6); the restaurant/lounge was almost empty. We asked for a table for five and this brought a sort of confusion amongst the waiters putting in mind that the place was almost empty and there were manyyy vacant tables(only about 3 tables were occupied). We couldn’t understand what the problem was.

We were left there standing while they kept pacing up and down looking very confused, we asked what the problem was and a waiter said that ALL the tables were reserved, kind of surprised , we asked what time these reservations were for and were told “ between 9:30pm and 10pm”. We were even more surprised! The time was 7pm! The tables were reserved for 10:00am to 10:30pm why couldn’t we sit down, eat and help this people make some money before the people who reserved the table came.

After much talking, we asked to speak to the manager, to our disappointment he wasn’t around and there was no other person in the lounge that had problem solving skills that we could speak to. A few minutes later, the waiters changed their minds and allowed us sit down. I must say that the ambiance of the lounge was very nice this was why we probably didn’t storm out of the place angrily. It was lovely with very modern décor. A sort of place one would sit with a friend, a date or husband giggling and gossiping all evening.

After we got the menu and placed our order for drinks, I came to the conclusion that

“too many idle waiters bringeth confusion”.

As we were about to conclude on our order for drinks, another waiter came from nowhere insisting that the drinks we wanted didn’t exist in their bar when indeed it existed. He wasn’t even the waiter taking our order; he didn’t know what we were talking about he only heard the last word of an order then interrupted. The lady who was taking our order explained to the intruding waiter that she understood what we wanted, they both argued for a bit and left. Their little argument went like this:

The lady: “we have it nowww what are you saying?”
The intruding waiter: “we don’t do it without alcohol”
The lady: “we do!!! That’s not the one they ordered now”
The intruding waiter: “oh ok”.

Then they carried themselves away.

By the time our drinks came, they were appalling and tasted very terrible! We asked for it to be taken away, another waiter took them away and didn’t even bother to ask what we wanted in replacement. After waiting 10 minutes with no waiter coming to ask us what we wanted to drink (they all stood by the bar chatting away), we beckoned on yet another waiter. Before we ended our night at least six waiters served us.

We ordered for replacement drinks. My drink looked very fancy but it was the case of “all that glitter is not gold” it didn’t taste the way it looked, it wasn’t nice at all. I didn’t bother complaining, I had water instead. There was no point ordering something else or asking them to re-make the drink, it was obvious that cocktails weren’t their thing, or maybe yesterday was a bad day for the bar attendant.

We ordered our food and thank God it was better than the drinks.

In conclusion,I had a fairly OK experience. Their non-alcoholic cocktails were a great disappointment, the fact that the waiters couldn’t even find us somewhere to sit or use their initiatives was irritating, and that there was no manager or supervisor/ problem solver on ground when we got there(and throughout our stay) was another disappointment and the greatest sin of all. I must not fail to mention again that the ambiance was very lovely.


Sip lounge is located at Akin Adesola Street, Victoria Island, Lagos.

Bungalow….Waiter goes "Boss" crazy

On a very rainy day just as my friend and I were getting ready to leave church, I got a message from my dearest saying “ hungry? we should do lunch”. I was over the moon considering that I had left the house early in the morning with no food in my stomach and the service at church was running much longer than I had thought, I was very excited to reply “yayyyyy”.

Contemplating on where to go for a nice lunch, my dearest suggested we went to Bungalow. At first I wasn’t really sure just because I hadn’t eaten there in 3 or 4 years. I didn’t know what the place would be like now in 2012. But I remained hopeful.

We got inside the restaurant and thanks to my very sensitive nose, the first thing I smelt was raw sea food. Well, I am not sure if they had just recieved a delivery or hunger playing games on me and my nose, whatever it was that I smelt, I didn’t like and that just made me more anxious about the food I was going to eat for both lunch and dinner.

We were welcomed by a waiter who took us to a seat that I instantly complained about. It was right in front of the air-conditioning unit. The waiter was very smart (he read my lips), he turned the AC off and I relaxed a little bit.

He brought the menu but I wasn’t quite sure of what I wanted to eat. Two different pastas on the menu caught my attention and I decided to ask the waiter what the difference was.

He answered vaguely “the ingredients” I thought “right, thanks for not helping”.

I placed my order. A few seconds later I took the menu again and turned to the last page. What I saw excited me and I changed my order from pasta to prawn teppanyaki and chicken teriyaki(delicious picture above). That was the best decision ever!

Our drinks and starters rolled in very fast. We had succulent chicken wings, calamari and delicious spring rolls accompanied with some in-house sauce , finger licking, they were lovely. As we were finishing our starters, our main meal came. Our food looked beautiful. We dug in, and it tasted as beautiful as it looked(the picture above).

Everything was right, nothing was wrong. The portions were very generous, I was overjoyed. Happily, I munched away. The food was fantastic. I asked the waiter to pack both our leftovers. As I sat there I was already dreaming of eating both leftovers for dinner.

The waiter was ok but he kept addressing my dearest as “Boss”. I wasn’t sure what I thought about that.

Why couldn’t he just say “Sir”? is “Boss” professional?

Anyway the whole service was nice. It would have been nicer if the waiter was able to make an effort to suggest something for me to eat when I needed his help.

Also the way he kept saying “ yes boss” “ok boss” “how is your food boss?” irritated me

I am not really a fan of over familiar waiters. It is nice to address customers as “Sir” or “Ma” and if they are real royalties “Your Royal Highness”, the president? “Your Excellency” but keep the "Boss" tittle for your “boss”

Apart from the waiter going “Boss” crazy, we had a lovely meal and time at Bungalow, just like old times.