From a tweeter post that I read a few days ago, there is a Tokyo Maid Café here in the Philippines. I searched over the internet and learned of its name – “Meidolls Café”. From their facebook fanpage saying that they opened last January 15, 2011, I just had to see it.
Today was the day; my friends and I went all the way from Makati to Cainta. My impression of a maid café already had a basis from a shojo manga turned anime called “Maid Sama!”
The moment we arrived at the place and saw that it was just a small store and is packed.
When I went inside, my thoughts of a well and good service was already down the slope. It took a while for us to get their attention so that we could ask to reserve a table for four. We went back for about an hour or less, I didn’t really look at the time since we already went out of our way for the adventure.
When we got back to the café there was a table waiting. We went inside and they gave us the menu. Noticing the venue, it wasn’t much but it was cozy none the less. We ordered the ramen, lasagna roll, and aglio olio. When the lasagna arrived, the maid that was taking an order from one of us and she had us thrown aback for a bit; The maid literally posed to the camera (there was a Japanese guy who wanted to take her picture) in the middle of taking an order then she did this “moe moe kyuun” thing and a second later she asked what was the order again. If this were an anime, that moment one would do a face palm, the other would have a big sweat drop, and I had a dot-dot-dot.
I tried to do a rough translation from google on “moe moe kyuun”, it meant “Lucky nine fire burning”. I do not know if this is correct but anyone out there can give me the right translation it would be greatly appreciated.
The food we ordered were a bit disappointing than I imagined. The tastes of the food didn’t really stand out except for the Lasagna roll. The ramen looked and tasted like it came from those instant noodle packs that you just need to boil in water. The aglio olio had about one tablespoon of minced carrots and potato and I could barely taste the olive oil and garlic or even anything. The lasagna roll had an interesting taste and wasn’t really that bad but as my friend said that the grounded meat should have been more grounded. Baring in mind that their kitchen corner was literally just a corner in the shop; I could imagine they can’t really cook that much with such a small place; there’s also no ventilation for the smoke when cooking from the stove. It didn’t take long for us to decide not to try out the other dishes and went on our way home.
If I were to rate the experience from 1 to 5 (5 being the highest), I would give it a 4; the experience was for the enjoyment of this memory; as I quote my friend – “it’s so bad that it’s too funny.”
Rating the food overall, I’d give it a 1 because of the interesting lasagna roll;
Should I even rate the service?
All in all the experience was something; yes, it was something but honestly, if they want to keep that place up they need to fix the food and their service.