Our NEW Tingkat Dinner

Since Jiale decided to stop their dinner delivery to my area, I went on a search mode to gather some information on the current tingkat dinner companies.

Based on a very informative Tingkat Dinner Delivery review website, I decided to do a 5 days trial dinner with Kim’s Kitchen last week. As usual I ordered the 3 dishes + 1 soup menu. On Monday, the food was delivered around 4.30pm, about the same timing as Jia Le.

The dishes and soup were sufficient for our family of 2 adults and 2 children.

The main “JUDGES” – Anthea and Anders seem to be fine with the new caterer food and finished up their dinner. No complaint on any of the dishes.

Personally, I like their dishes and it’s even closer to home cooked. Their vegetables are very green and cut to the finest. Meats are usually boneless and fishes are fresh. Soups varieties are good and healthy.

Last week we had this dish – chestnut chicken chop special (栗子鸡扒). It is so unique and tasty that we finished up the whole dish till the last drop of 汁 . Slurp!!

This week, they served a Fragrant Fish Delight 干香鱼 块and Anthea ate the whole lot of it and said – “mommy, next time you asked uncle to give us this fish everyday”…haha.

Anders enjoyed the Rendang Chicken that was served this week and he finished his bowl of rice in record time.

So with all these positive “Feedbacks”, we decided to continue our dinner order with Kim’s and I requested for the Tiffin containers. On Monday, Kim’s delivered our dinner but was in those microwavable containers. When I checked with them, they told me that they were out of stock for the Tiffin containers and waiting for the new stock to arrive.

The only “issue” that I have is – Kim’s does not provide rice, so this means that I have to cook our own rice for dinner. I am perfectly fine with cooking rice and as of this month – I am officially promoted to a “煮饭婆“。。嘻嘻！

I am glad that our dinner routine is back to the same and I must say – it just get better !!!

晚餐服务

Yesterday afternoon I received a call from my tingkat dinner caterer – Jia Le Buffet.

“Mrs. Tan, 我们将停止晚餐服务到你那一区。你的最后一天是星期四.”

I was a little caught off guard when I heard the news that they will be stopping dinner delivery service to my area. After asking the WHY question, the lady mentioned that it wasn’t profitable anymore for the company to deliver to my area.

Sigh….I had such good impression of Jia Le dinner and so far their service is excellent and food are good. No complaint.

Well, same as previous caterer, it’s always the cost issue and I can understand it from the company standpoint.

We started our tingkat dinner with Jia Le since July 2008 and it would be 1 year in about another month but this 1st year anniversary did not come true. Sad but this is reality about such relationship.

Now I am on my “Search Mode” for a new caterer and had booked Kim’s Kitchen for a 5 days trial starting next Monday.

Many times, I would ask myself – “should I start cooking on my own?” But I am still convinced that tingkat dinner served us better.

There are a few reasons to the dinner delivery service:

1. At times, when I have pressing projects, I will bring work home and spend the afternoon at home finishing my project. If I cook, this will mean that I would not have enough time to complete my work.

2. Usually on weekdays, I will hand wash Anthea’s school uniform and on alternate days, I will mop the house. On these days, I would finish the household chores almost near to 4pm. This means I would have to prepare dinner from 4pm onwards and I would not have time to revise Anthea’s homework with her.

3. On weekdays, I still do my regular jogs. So if I cook, I will not be able to jog. I need to exercise to de-stress…hehe.

4. The amount of time spent on planning, preparing, cooking and washing for a meal is just too challenging for me and the dinner catering is more cost effective for us.

So far, dinner catering has work well with our family lifestyle and as long as the children are happily eating their dinner, I am happy to continue with the same routine.

Let’s hope that our new caterer will be just as good as our current one. Like I said before:

天下没有不散之宴席。。。