Social House – Not so social after all.

The fourth Land Coffee aka Kopi Darat was held yesterday at Grand Indonesia’s Social House, which was located in Harvey Nichols’ grocery shop in the West Mall. The ones who made it were Boy, Devi, Parvita and Toni.

Now, first things first – Grand Indonesia kind of irks me. The size of the place, for a start, is simply too big. It’s humoungous. No one needs a mall that big. But I could be wrong – apparently Indonesians do. But seeing as there was a full on hype about Social House, (to be exact I can’t remember who suggested this venue in the first place but never you mind), we decided to give it a go.

I arrived with himself around 1 pm and we had our lunch at Kafe Betawi. I ordered Laksa Betawi and himself ordered Soto Betawi with rice. For drinks, we ordered Avocado juice (mine) and his was Lemon juice. When the food arrived, I had to say that I was a bit unsatisfied – the Laksa was a bit too sweet to my liking. Himself also said the same thing about his Soto Betawi, I ended up asking for some salt from the waiter.

Another thing that I noticed was that the waitresses were kind of pouty and unsmiling. I guess I never noticed this before, but working in a place where the students were trained to work in a five-star hotel environment, I began to be more aware of how important customer service skills were.

At work, the students were expected to smile – all the time. It was one of the most important parts of their job. They were not only required to smile, but also to change their whole attitude in general, including their body postures (slouching and leaning against walls are big no-no’s), their conversational skills (being able to say “How are you today” and hold a general chit-chat with the guests were to be expected from them). For the students who were training to become Assistant Steward Lido, they were expected to greet everyone by their names, to smile and to work efficiently. That meant no idle chit-chat with their friends while on duty, and they had to know when was the time to clear the guests’ tables so that the guests could proceed to have the next meal course. They were also expected to find out whether everything was satisfactory and up to the guests’ expectations.

With all those things in mind, I began to understand how customer service skills could easily make a difference in places like restaurants and hotels where manners and good services were not only expected but also maintained and improved.

At Social House, unfortunately for them, I didn’t witness any of those things mentioned above. Even Devi, who was the first person to arrive, got a rude welcome by the maitre’d who told her that to be able to get in she’d have to have a friend who was already sitting inside. Did that mean a single person was not allowed to eat at Social House? A tad bit discriminative, don’t you think?

I don’t care if it was in Harvey Nichols or Harrods or whatever, I thought the rule of customer service was that you had to be nice to everyone, regardless of what they looked like. Just because Devi wasn’t wearing a Rp. 16 million rupiah worth of dress, it didn’t mean she couldn’t afford eating at Social House.

Another thing that I noticed was that there seemed to be an ample amount of waiters available but all of them seemed to be very clueless on waiting tables. Sometimes they’d huddle around and gossiped with each other in one corner, and the manager would just walk around and did nothing. When Boy ordered bottled water, the waiter tried to pour it into the glass but the lid closed back up, and he just kept on pouring, rendering the whole thing to be completely useless. Poor Boy had to tell him to just never mind and he ended up pouring the water by himself. Atrocious.

Devi and Parvita ordered one of those hip-and-happening juices with names like Stress Buster and whatelses, and Devi thought it was funny that her glass was smaller than the one that Parvita’s came with. I ordered Forget Me Not (a mocktail) and the glass size was the same as Parvita’s. She complained to the waiter but the waiter didn’t give any solutions to make her feel better. What was even more comical was when we ordered bottled water, the bottle was unbelievably tiny but the glasses were big. How ironic!

For food, himself and I ordered the spaghetti with spicy garlic oil, prawns and fresh parsley. It came out green, which was unexpected. I could tell that himself was a bit turned off by the overall tone of it as the menu itself didn’t have any pictures of what the dishes looked like, but he ended up tasting it a bit and I finished the whole thing off, half-heartedly, off course. The taste was nothing spectacular, sorry to say. I really thought they could’ve had done a better job with the taste. Perhaps they meant the pasta to be al dente but it still left a floury, chewy texture on my tongue.

Himself’s opinion on the Iced Cappuccino was not exactly mind-shattering either. He said the Iced Cappuccino in Dunkin Donuts was much better. Ouch!

Another thing that I noticed about the service of the waiters was that we were sitting there, still talking and we already finished our meal but we were still waiting for Toni who got held off at Senayan. It was clear that we were in no hurry whatsoever, but no waiter came up and cleared our tables. Even when we already ordered something else, the waiter just left without offering or having the initiative to do so, until I had to tell one of them to do it! Social House, where the hell did you hire these people from? Did they know any single thing about working in a hospitality business at all?

But enough about the downsides. Apart from the lack of customer service skills, the atmosphere of the place was great. I loved the architecture and it was cozy enough to stay for hours and have a chat with your friends (until the waiters started giving you hints to piss off, that is). It was an ideal place to take some photos as well (as evident by Toni and Parvita’s results of magic hands), as the overall lightings gave out a friendly and warm feeling to the whole outlook of the place.

As for the verdict – would I be going back there? I don’t know, we’ll have to see. If they continued with that kind of services, I’d definitely not. The food was standard by any means, the service barely gave out any plus points. Not to forget that it was a part of Harvey Nichols, one would think they’d offer something much more spectacular and of high standard.

Perhaps next time I should stick to Cazbar.