Annual Staff Dinner @ Imperial Palace Hotel

We had our annual staff dinner at the Imperial Palace Hotel here in Miri. This hotel is considered quite new, it being about a year since it opened. Our function was held at the Melinau Room on the first floor. If you park at the basement, you'd have to take the lift to the lobby and then walk up the stairs to the first floor. It's cause you need to insert your room card into the elevator before it brings you to the first floor and upwards. Funny that the hotel does not bother to have a sign near the elevator to inform guests of this fact. If there is, then I sure did not see it.

So as I was trying to press the "1" button (yeah, I'm that dumb that it did not occur to me that I could not go to the first floor without a card), came a hotel employee in her uniform. "Pergi mana?" she asked. I told her, and she said she was going to the same floor. She used her employee's pass, inserted it into the elevator and off we went up. She even showed me the way to the function room. How nice of her. If only all employees were like her, because I felt that the waiters and waitresses needed a refresher about serving food.

When it was time to eat, the waiter lifted the lid to the round food carousel at the centre of the table. We looked at each other. Were we expected to only eat those? Where was the rice?

Minutes ticked and we were still left wondering. Most of us helped ourselves to the dishes there, spooning bits of everything on the plate. We weren't sure if we should start eating lest there's rice. Finally, we flagged down someone and asked if there was any rice served with the dishes.

Then only came someone with Tartare Sauce. "This is for the Fish & Chips," she said.

Tartare sauce

More waiting and finally someone came with the salad, rice and stirfried vermicelli.

Salad

Stirfried vermicelli

Well, if you want a good meal, I don't think you would want to eat here. Most of the food is plain bland.

My platter
From the top, clockwise :
Stir-fried baby kailan - not too bad, at least it was salty enough to bring out the taste of the garlic used in stir-frying the vegetable.
Fish & chips - Most of my colleagues thought the fish and fries were tough; I kinda liked it when eaten with lots of Tartare sauce. So you could say that I liked the Tartare sauce and not the bits of fish and fries. The sauce was just tangy enough for my liking and I liked biting into bits of pickles and onions in the sauce.
Deep-fried chicken with some sort of a Thai dressing - both the chicken and the dressing were quite tasteless really
Tofu & Chicken - tasteless
Squid Rings - looked yum but tasteless
Beef rendang - tasteless

The mains aside, I did enjoy the salads and also the vermicelli which was stir-fried with ginger flower. Very fragrant. My only complaint would be the teeny weeny portion that I had. Barely two spoonfuls. ;( There was soup but they did not bother to serve us too.

At the end of the meal, I spooned some fish and fries into the bowl of Tartare Sauce and nibbled on them on and off. Then came a waitress and she asked, "Can I clear this?" I had no problem with her except that I detected a mild annoyance in her tone. How rude.

Then, dessert time!

A slice of choc & walnut cake which I found to be very dry; the pretty kiwi roll looked better than it tasted. I'd like it to be more tangy; the coffee mousse cake was alright but too bad I'm not really a fan

The watermelon was deliciously crispy and sweet; the oranges and dragon fruit were alright.

Well, the annual dinner done with, and tomorrow school closes for another year. It's the end of year 12 of my teaching career. I feel so ancient. ;p