Cola Food

After a week of opening, my colleagues and I decided to try the new western stall “Mad Food Delights”. The new kid on the block, with so much culinary promise, would carry the hopes and expectations of every hungry patron. Bright eyed and bushy tailed, the new stall would fill up empty stomachs and leave patron with a western food craving satisfied. For context, the resident western food stall, “Pasta Cucina” has been missing in action since the first day I started my employ at Revenue House, leaving the place with just a nasi pandang stall, nasi ayam stall and vegetarian stall to feed the hungry stomachs of Cola Foods’ patrons. So one can imagine my excitement and elation with the addition of a new western stall. However, all the enthusiasm I felt vanished faster than you can say “frozen foods”. I ordered the chicken burger with 2 sides (fries and mac and cheese) for $7.90 and what I got in return for my money was a huge plate of disappointment that soon turned into confusion then anger. My disappointment came when I touched the buns of my burger and realized they were cold, and the cheese in my burger was cold, hard and unmelted. A single lettuce, smeared with an abundance of sauce, overpowered the burger. The chicken patty was thin with barely any meat and did not fit the size of its buns. The overall aesthetic of the burger was akin to one you would find in a primary school canteen. Then comes the sides. The fries were in a shade of yellow that screams frozen and poorly cooked. You could taste more batter than potato in those fries, and sometimes the occasional salt would pop in to remind me how under-seasoned and unevenly salted the fries were. If you thought there is no way someone could ruin fries, Mad Food Delights will prove just how wrong you are. Lastly, the mac and cheese, or should I say mac, since there was no remnant of cheese anywhere. It was wet, soggy and completely bland. My confusion came while I ate my burger and my colleague questioned how someone would have the audacity to start a business like this. Did they not test their dishes with family and close friends? Were they not honest with their reviews? I am generally supportive of most small businesses. I truly admire their courage and entrepreneurial spirit. But this is not one of those times. Perhaps my feelings were unwarranted as some might think “well what did you expect from a $7.90 western dish?” But franchises such as Aston’s and Collin’s built their culinary success on delicious western food with 2 sides for the exact same price range. Mad Food Delights was far from their standards. Everything tasted like a mash up of cheap food and poor culinary skills. Let this be a warning to everyone who enters Cola Food in Revenue House and to the business owners of Mad Food Delights. The name of the stall is only one third accurate. It is madness, but there was definitely no food to be found, and the meal was certainly not delightful.