Sunday 29 September 2013

Cafe Jin Yi By Coffee Ritual @ Damansara Utama, Petaling Jaya

Jin Yi by Coffee Ritual is another new player in the sudden ballooning of burger joints. This restaurant is located in Damansara Utama and is on the first floor right above Seri Penang. With the sudden mushrooming of new burger joints, what drew me to this place is that unlike other places that serve Lamb Burgers, these guys sell Mutton Burgers instead. To those that are not quite familiar with the difference, Lamb and Mutton are both sheep but the meat of a sheep in it's first year is Lamb, that of a juvenile sheep older than one year is Hogget and the meat of an adult sheep is Mutton. 

Cafe Jin Yi by Coffee Ritual in Damansara Utama

Posters at the Entrance

Posters at the Entrance

Interior of the Restaurant
Having been located on the first floor, they just have a very small dining space with not more than 5 small tables and a long bar counter. This is very much a family run business manned mainly by the couple. As such, when there is a decent crowd, service tends to get delayed. From what I observed, besides selling these burgers, they also do sell some coffee making machines and also have an online business where customers could order these machines. Even when I arrived here today, there was no one at the counter and it took them five minutes to come out of the small kitchen to attend to me. 

The Menu

The Menu

The Menu

The Menu

The Menu

The Menu
Their burgers are predominantly Beef, Chicken and Mutton and these are all homemade patties. Besides these, they do offer some deserts as well as a handful of sandwiches. It does take some skill in ordering the dishes here and if you are unsure, it is best to ask for help as they have a number of combo sets which could help reduce the bill as opposed to ordering Ala Carte. Having ordered my Cheese Mutton Burger, I topped it up with a combo set to get a soft drink at RM 4.00 . I heard that their coffee here is quite good but since it was an extremely hot Sunday afternoon, decided to go for a cold drink instead. With that, the couple disappeared again into the kitchen. 

Sprite (As part of the Upgraded Combo) @ RM 4.00...otherwise it's RM 5.00
Well, shortly after placing my orders, another family walked in and they were attracted in checking out the Coffee Makers after having placed their orders. With that, both husband and wife spent their entire time demonstrating the machines to them. I am sure that this is not the first time that this had happened as when you look at the Foursquare reviews, it is filled with the very same comments. After that, another couple walked in and they did not even bother to go get their orders. At last, it took them 28 minutes to send me the drink and it took the next couple slightly longer than that to receive their drinks. My drink should have just taken less than 5 minutes. Its just a matter of opening the fridge, getting the can of Sprite, getting a glass with ice and sending it over to me. This wait time is definitely not acceptable. I had even read reviews where it took them an hour to send the drinks over to customers just because they were too busy attending to these demonstrations. Come on guys....you either run a Cafe or an outlet selling these machines. You cannot do both without sufficient manpower. The more you neglect your customers, the higher the tendency for you to loose them. Remember, these people came here for food first and then got interested in your machines and hence the drawing factor is the food. If you loose people by trying to sell them these machines and neglecting the main reason they came there, you know where that would lead you to. 

Cheese Mutton Burger @ RM 21.50

The Cheese Mutton Burger

Closer Look At The Patty

The Burger Cut Into Two Halfs
For the price paid, it comes not only with the burger but a small bucket of fries, some salad and pickles. From the time of ordering, it took them 52 minutes to deliver my meal. Honestly, I wanted to walk out much earlier but since it was a common calamity faced by all their customers, I just wanted to see where it goes. In fact, many of them lost their patience and were clearly disgruntled. It was very evident from their face expressions. The Salad was just so so. I would only rate it at 5/10. The Mutton Burger was nice but the bread was really hard, flaky and dry. I just didn't like the bread so much so I just removed the top bread and had the burger with the rest of the layers. I would rate their Mutton Burger at 7.2/10 . Nothing great honestly, but it was not bad. Tasted more like Corned Mutton to me as it was on the slightly salty side. Nevertheless, the burger size was huge. 

Small Bucket of Fries
The Bucket of Fries were just ordinary fries. Nothing special about them. It was not a homemade preparation and must have been something from one of the supermarkets. I was expecting much more from them as most of these newly opened burger joints have improvised the standard fries and have come up with new recipes. I would only rate this at 5/10 . The average rating is not because the fries were not good but it is simply because it was just another fries which lacked innovation. 

Location Map
If you would like to try out this place, you could find the location map above. I do not want to comment more as I have said what I wanted to say from my experience here today but I sincere feel that they need to clearly align their activities to their priorities which is either they want to excel as a cafe or as a retail outlet selling coffee machines. Please do note that this restaurant DOES NOT have Halal status but they are Pork free.

Address: 68-M, Jalan SS 21/39, Damansara Utama, 47400 Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia.

Opening Hours: Tuesday - Sunday 1100 - 2200
                            Closed on Mondays

Telephone: +603 7725 3633




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