CLOVE

5 🌟 for the wonderful Sophia Yan! She went above and beyond to make my birthday a wonderful one, and even went the extra mile to help clean my doll topper for my cake! Her smiles and thoughtful service made our night. Thanks so much Sophia. Wishing you nothing but the best!

I've been excited about returning ever since they rebranded and reopened a year or two back! We were there for Saturday lunch buffet. However, it was sadly very disappointing.

The good: The buffet certainly hit all the right notes with its categories. There was quite a good variety of dessert, seafood, cheese platters, etc. The Swiss chocolate cake, peanut tart, and coconut ice cream were pretty good. Cheese was good too!

What could have been improved: The quality of the food wasn't just up to par with those of the same price range (e.g. embu). Desserts did not make me particularly want to go for seconds (other than the handful of items listed in the previous section).

I was previously interested in the chocolate dinner buffet, but after this experience I think I'll hold off on trying that one anytime soon.

There was no parking coupon for dining there.

Context:
It's 6.30am on a Friday morning, dine in for a family of 4 (my partner's grandma and mother, my partner and myself) using 2x 1-for-1 deals.
Most of the dining guests were hotel guests of Swissotel Singapore.
Hotel guests just stated their room number and seating was free and easy (take note of this) with no reserved tables during breakfast service.

The good:
- Wide selection of buffet items: Asian/SG (congee, dim sum, prawn noodles), western (pastries, omelette station, pancake machine, cereal, etc), premium selection (smoked salmon, beef pastrami, soft cheeses), fruit bar available.
- Good beverage options (hot drinks, fruit juices)
- Gluten free options albeit limited to bread and some pastry
- Staff were quick to clear cutlery and great at keeping your table clean. The elderly staff was extremely helpful when I asked if I could get some ice for my coffee

Why the 1 star? Extremely poor front-of-house staff.
The female staff member that greeted us at start of the dining experience didn't have a very pleasant facial expression to look at. (it's 6.30am, I don't have an issue with that, everyone's tired, benefit of the doubt given)
At 6.30am, breakfast service has just commenced. When we arrived, the restaurant was at approximately 10% occupancy.
However, she said because we are getting 2 separate 1-for-1 deals that we could not be seated next to each other let alone seated on a table for 4. Mind you, we did not request for any sort of special seating, all of us assumed that we will be treated as all the other hotel dining guests have been, ie given free choice of seating.
She went on to personally escort us to different 2 seater tables at totally different areas within the restaurant. (Now 85% of the tables at this restaurant are 2 seater tables, and only 10% of that was occupied) No other dining guests got such delibrate measures with regards to where they sat, for example people were using their bags / phones / clothing articles to reserve tables while they went about getting their food.
I could not place a reason behind this deliberate decision to separate us due to a credit card deal.
1. If this was restaurant policy, the management should probably reconsider putting in such a petty clause
2. If this was the staff member's personal judgement, none of us have ever done anything of harm to you, why would you go out of your way to make a meal unenjoyable by breaking up a family unit?

The very start of the dining experience started off rock bottom. Negative marks.
It was really tough trying to claw back any sense of enjoyment from eating back no matter how wide the food diversity was.

If you're a paying customer considering dining at this restaurant, I sincerely hope that you will not experience such a lack of empathy and outright discriminatory treatment when you decide to dine here.

If someone in a management position is reading this, my wish is that you either review your policies regarding dining deals to a point where a paying customer is simply a pay customer with no different forms of treatment. No one is coming to CLOVE with the expectation of private dining experience, just a decent breakfast buffet (and your food is lives up to expectation). If it's not an issue regarding your policies, then please ensure that your front-of-house staff are appropriately trained and adopt an attitude of kindness towards dining guests, we bore no illwill towards the woman that attended to us but she offered no pleasantries and displayed unprofessional behaviour in the workplace. That really broke the dining experience to a point where everyone was unhappy and could not enjoy the food to the fullest.

The guest rate came up to be about 50+. Pretty good for the buffet spread.