Wok N Roll Jabriya and Elements Spa at Royal Hyatt

Slapperella very kindly invited me for an early birthday present to a massage at the Elements Spa at the Royale Hyatt Hospital. I have posted before about how much I like the RH services - both as a hospital and as a Pampering Palace. The women's hospital is managed by Banyan Tree Resorts and everything is Thai-tranquil. Very relaxing.

I had a hot stone massage. Slaps went in for the stretchy kind of Thai massage that I had once and then decided that some of my parts were just not meant to go in that direction (she's a lot more flexible - or so I hear!) tee hee.

My massage was 2 hours long and was a mixture of deep tissue, some stretching, and hot stones. It wasn't the traditional hot stone that I'm used to, but I still liked it a lot. The young lady who gave me the massage was quite petite and small and didn't look nearly as tough as she turned out to be. She was so soft spoken that I could barely hear her and she probably thought (not unjustifiably) that I was one of those loud Americans. 'Whaaaat? I can't heeeeeear you!' LOL.

The massage rooms at Elements are nish. Dark wood, green linens, marble. They start off by washing your feet as you relax in a chair (my robe was too small/tight in the girl-places and so it was kinda hard to concentrate on me feets) and sip on lemon grass tea. Quite nice.

Thai Lady found a place on my back "ooooh, very much tension!" and proceeded to kneed the bejezus out of it for what seemed like 45 minutes. Wait... didn't this start out by her saying, "If you want me to stop anytime, just tell me." No means No, Thai Lady! It huuuuurt, but eventually the kinks were out and we were on to the stretching. Now, it is a very odd feeling to be neked alone in a room with a woman sitting on your butt (at least - for some of us). It is not a way that I would usually go, but hey, it was all about the massage. There was some accompanied stretching (Britany money-shot style) which was also slightly unnerving, but hey whatever. She seemed to think it was all very normal. After all, it is an ob-gyn facility so they are probably used to all that. Okey dokey.

I hope I don't seem like a whiney, ungrateful biotch. I have to watch myself because I tend to push the boundaries of "perspective" verses downright complaining. It was a great massage and I am really grateful to my dear friend for doing that for me.

But now I will complain....

So after the massage, we walked across the RH entrance to Wok N Roll. It is a somewhat-new (7 months) Japanese restaurant. I wasn't sure if it was the same place, but I had heard that there was a great new place in Jabriya that some of the staff from the Crowne Plaza had moved to. Turned out, it was one in the same. I think The Romanian first told me about it. Her friend owns it or something like that. If I was still talking to her, I would tell her to tell him how terrible the service is and that he should fire his manager NOW. (People need jobs right now and they should be given to people who actually want to do a good job.)

It is a beautiful restaurant - similar to Maki in decor. They've got pretty cabinas with sliding doors. Everything is done with slate tiles. Way cool. We loved the food and there is a huge selection. My friend from the CP, Abdul Qader, has moved to Wok N Roll as a chef. We had a nice conversation with him (before he left and we had a chance to tell him what happened next). As I sat down, I thought that I might be able to write a restaurant review about it since I don't believe anyone else had yet - and there is a REASON for that as it turned out....

The service was so bad that their customers were walking out before they finished their food - it was just that crappy. They had (I counted) 6 servers in a small restaurant; and not one of them was paying any attention at all to the customers. Our entrees arrived before the appetizers. They brought the wrong order. The 2 female servers stood behind the prep bar the entire time, talking about the customers loud enough for (you guessed it) the customers to hear them! When the busboys did appear to finally clear anything at all off tables (we did it ourselves, moving the food onto the empty tables next to us), they shouted across the restaurant at each other; while customers sat staring in disbelief. The "manager" bullied the waiters (who were all standing in a corner of the room) to do something, when he did the same as them. So much for "lead by example". When we complainted to the "manager", he never said a word - just walked away. We asked for our check; they brought us someone elses and then never apologized. I had asked for the phone number of the owner and a take-away menu; never got either. "Manager" just walked into the kitchen and never returned.

Wok N Roll: As Slaps said, "Possibly the worst service we've ever had anywhere." I wrote to the owner - let's see if I get any response.