I ordered a Combo 2 Meal (chips, calamari and 600mL drink), battered cod, aioli sauce, and asked for lemon & salt.
The Aioli sauce was okay. The wait for the meal was not too long.
The 2 young gentlemen serving other customers were friendly. The older lady who served me was not outwardly rude, however, she also was not very warm or welcoming. She had a blunted affect and she failed to provide service with a smile. To me, it felt like she did not want to be there.
I can overlook this if the meal is good. Unfortunately, the chips, calamari and cod were all overcooked and dry.
The calamari had lost its chewy texture. I could taste only the crumbs around the outside of each ring. I removed the crumbs from the outside for the purpose of tasting the calamari. Upon doing this, I discovered each ring had been trimmed quite thinly at some stage during processing - from a side on view, the rings had clean cut perpendicular surfaces, giving them a rectangular appearance. On some rings, the calamari was only 2 mm thick. I believe this, combined with the overcooking, is likely the reason I could only taste crumbs. I am left questioning whether the calamari actually was fresh, or whether it came from a frozen supermarket packet. If it came from a frozen supermarket packet and was then subsequently crumbed at the shop, it would border on false advertising for the business to include in its name, the words "Trawler Fresh". Alternatively, perhaps the shop is trimming the thickness of each calamari ring to increase profit. However, many alternative fish and chips shops are not doing this & their prices are approximately the same.
The flesh of the cod had shrunk due to the overcooking & it was dry, chewy and tough. The batter had an overbrowned appearance.
I tried really hard to think positive and eat the chips, but they had a chalky texture and an overbrowned appearance - once again, from being overcooked and possibly also due to poor quality potatoes. Some chips had prominent black spots on them. I tried super-soaking the chips in the aioli sauce to cover up the chalky, dry texture and overbrowning, however, my palate found them to be beyond saving. I ended up throwing approximately 75% of the chips in the bin.
The lemon was also dry. Perhaps the shop is selecting poor quality fruit. Perhaps they are slicing the lemons too early in the day, and the slices are losing moisture because they are sitting in the fridge for an excessive amount of time prior to serving.
I did not call the shop or bring the food back to them. I actually felt too sick from the bits of the meal that I did eat, to want to get a new one. The poor quality of the meal did prompt me to research other peoples' reviews of the business because I was trying to ascertain whether I had just been unlucky as sometimes this can happen. Upon researching, I noticed the reviews have become increasingly inconsistent for a while now, and I also notice that the owner's response to these reviews has at times been hostile and blaming of the customer. This hostility prompted me to add my own review.
The above observations indicate a range of possible scenarios: problems with staffing & training, a failure to act on feedback, or a perhaps there has been a genuine attempt to act on feedback but it has not been entirely successful.
Whatever the cause, it is not the customer's job to problem solve for a business, but it is the business' job to get their product right, particularly given the increasing nature of negative reviews over an increasing length of time. The business has already been provided a reasonable amount of time to rectify its emerging pattern of poor reviews in order to achieve a goal of being consistent in delivering a quality service and product that it used to deliver. Demands made by the owner that the customer waste their time and/or money making phone calls or travelling back to the shop to fix things for them, are becoming unreasonable. I would love to give the business two stars, but all of these combined factors lead me to only give...
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