I immediately called the restaurant reservation to find out more. I was pleased to hear that it had a promotion for a wide spread of Swiss, European and International buffet, only for this special secretarial week. The lunch included a drink, free flow of buffet which included unlimited serving of the main menu. I was told the spread consisted of sushi, maki roll, soup, desert, salad, etc, and a hot selection of food (which was only for this special week). On normal days, the buffet is mainly Swiss and European food, and only one serving of the main menu. For secretarial week celebration, a door gift of a notebook calculator and hand cream was also included. I was so excited over the great promotion and immediately made a reservation for four for Tuesday's lunch at noon.

At the appointed time, the four of us excitedly looked forward to a great meal and walked in to Cafe Swiss. To my surprise, there were probably only two or three tables occupied. One waitress took us to our table and left us. No one attended to us. I wanted to order a drink first but no one came. Three of the staff (one woman and two gentlemen) were talking among themselves near the bar. No one attended to us. I had to walk to them, and asked whether we could order our drinks. To my surprise, he did not seem to know about the promotion. He had to check it out. So we decided to check out the buffet table first - the spread was miserable, and we were wondering where the hot selection of food was. I then saw the manager, and asked him about the promotion. He told me it was only Swiss and European food, and only one serving of the main menu. He could not do much but suggested that we go to Plaza Cafe which had more variety of food. We left unhappily to check out Plaza Cafe.

The service at Cafe Swiss was a real disappointment. It's a five-star hotel but the treatment we got was not so.

Over at Plaza Cafe, the manager was professional and attended to us immediately. However, there seemed to be too many foreign waitresses who could not understand us, hardly smiled and did not seem to respond to us.

Chiu Chiu Ping (Mdm)