Kopi Talk - Green House Cafe in Singapore

 Posted by Gabriel , Thanks for the article

Greenhouse Cafe I dislike going to mega-malls like Vivocity. Other than having to navigate through throngs of busy shoppers, finding a place to eat (especially at peak meal hours) is always a headache. Thus, when I accompanied my mum there to do our Christmas shopping a few days ago, I jumped into the first eating place we saw that had seats available.
Located just next to the MRT entrance to Vivocity, Greenhouse Cafe offered a slightly quiet(er) respite from the insane hustle of desperate last-minute shoppers.
While the cafe was decorated quaintly, with a warm, semi-rustic charm (as well as an adjoining shop called Pocket Full of Posies selling assorted knick-knacks), the relative lack of customers at lunch-hour should have warned me about the lukewarm standard of the cafe’s offering.

I ordered a beef lasagne set, which came with cream of mushroom soup, orange juice and a slice of cake (with alternatives being jelly served in a plastic cup or a slice of watermelon at an admittedly cheap price of $12.90.
While the lasagne was texturally savoury and the cheese was chewy but not tough, the sauce was too salty for my tastes. Repeated bites had me going for the horrendously diluted orange juice (which wasn’t even up to the standard of the cordial mixes in the army).

The homemade mushroom soup (i.e. not plopped out from a can of Campbell’s), though, was pretty good and had a slightly bitter and strong mushroom taste, as was the surprisingly-light peach cake (although the alternatives sounded terribly cheap).
My mother had seafood marinara pasta, which was terrible. Other than a lack in the marinara sauce (it was barely enough to cover up the pasta), the sauce was bland and lacking and the few ingredients scattered on the plate tasted oddly uncooked and had uneven textures.

The service staff at the cafe, while earnest, weren’t knowledgeable about even basic things like whether there was any credit card promotion (although, to be fair, the guy serving us was only on his first day at work). Also, while the promotional menu implied a choice of drinks for the set meal, when I ordered I was told that the afore-mentioned terrible orange juice was the only option. To top it off, the bill we asked for turned out to be the hand-written white piece of paper where the staff took our orders on.
Although these aren’t huge gaffes per se, they do show a distinct lack of preparation and professionalism on the part of the owners.
While the mushroom soup and cake were ok, they were nothing to write home about and, couldn’t make up for some of the gastronomical mishaps we were served (the orange juice, in particular, was a huge turn-off). I wouldn’t recommend the place except for those desperate for seats.