Chris Ihidero Unedited: RHAPSODY’S REALITIES – Loud music, ignorant waiters and steak don’t go well together

By Chris Ihidero

It was the significant other’s birthday the other day and, in order to maintain my striking position in her life, I took her to dinner at the Ikeja City Mall branch of Rhapsody’s. Before that eventful evening I had been in the Victoria Island branch once for an event. I had heard that the V.I branch was the new hangout spot for a significantly foreign (read: white) crowd, mostly expats (read: significant jobholder), not immigrants (read: insignificant loafer). To avoid an expat/immigrant debate, we chose the Ikeja City Mall branch; big mistake.

When you find bouncers at the door of what you thought was a restaurant, you should turn back. With benefit of hindsight, we should have been warned of the disaster awaiting us when two hefty men held the doors open on our arrival. As the doors closed behind us, heavy musicwelcomed us in. For a moment I thought we were in the wrong place. This was 7.30pm on a Sunday, I said to myself. So, why the heavy music? Why the club feel?

We found ourselves seats and waited for a waiter. Right opposite us, a table filled with teenagers taking selfies and eating ice cream, talking rather loudly, reinforced our trepidation. Eventually a waiter came our way and a menu was provided. After all that had confronted us so far, I had expected a menu of fries and burgers, as the whole atmosphere was more club than restaurant. Pleasantly surprised then was I to find a list of restaurant type food and drinks on the menu. Hallelujah!

For our first course, we ordered a canapé platter, after the waiter blissfully informed us that she didn’t know what was in it. I was reassured by the knowledge that, knowing how important ‘small chops’ is to the continuous co-existence of the ethnic groups that make up Nigeria, no restaurant would dare mess up ordinary ‘small chops.’  How foolish I was. When the damn platter arrived, it had more onion rings than the Olympic games logo has rings.  What is the importance of onion rings to life, ehn? The samosa was rock solid: David would have achieved the same result if he had put one in his sling rather than a stone in the battle with Goliath. The spring rolls were passable and I can’t remember if there were pieces of chicken in that platter. Were there pieces of chicken in that miserable platter? I can’t remember. But I can remember that it did have something made of flour that was fried and had something that was supposed to be melted cheese inside. I remember it because it was puke-inducing. We painfully nibbled on what we could without ruining our humanity and then set the rest aside. Yeah, you read that right: for the first time in recorded history, Nigerians had small chops leftover.

When we ordered the main course, it was even more obvious that the waiter was an ignoramus.  If you’re going to sell a main course for about N7, 000, shouldn’t you educate your wait-staff on the content of each item on your menu so they will be able to properly guide people who are about to spend the equivalent of their mother’s bride price on a plate of food? Commonsense would dictate this to be so, but commonsense is not a commodity that Rhapsody’s trades in, apparently. When the T-bone steak we ordered finally arrived, in spite of the waiter’s lack of knowledge, we were pleasantly surprised at how good it was. Properly spiced, it was juicy to the bone and full of flavour. The meat was so tender it was hard to chew for long before the throat pulled it downwards to share in its glory, however fleeting. The fried rice that accompanied it was, naturally, a disaster. One can’t expect a perfect plate at Rhapsody’s, it seems. The rice felt it had been cooked in excess a week before, packed in containers and dumped in a freezer. Each spoonful was a painful experience. When the bill arrived, it came to about N19, 000. (I had a glass of red wine and she had one chapman.) Yeah, that’s how much that experience cost us.

Needless to say, Rhapsody’s realities are very different from mine, where a dining experience is concerned. I shall not make the same mistake twice.