panda & cakes: cafe de amigo @ eastwood shopping centre

A lot of shops have been closing down in the centre but recently, there's been a wave of new tenants come in to occupy the vacated floorspace. Cafe de Amigo opened up just under 2 weeks ago and already, it has sparked much debate as to 'whether the food is good?', 'whether the food is value for money', 'whether macau cafe is cheaper' and 'whether it is worth a visit?' My take is that you never know until you check it out for yourself.

A catch up with the high school girls was long overdue and I proposed to have lunch at Cafe de Amigo at 12.30pm. My mistake; I should've told Emily that lunch was at noon and Mandy that lunch was actually on Friday just so she might remember. Also, I should've kept to the rule that the closest always turns up the latest cause I ended up waiting half an hour for most people to arrive. Fortunately, I bumped into Dobie and chatted with Sarah upstairs at Legends whilst waiting . Can't believe Legends is moving to Beecroft!

Anyhow, for those who missed the catch up, we didn't actually eat lunch till 2.30. Whilst waiting for everybody, we decided on coffee at Centro's and by the time we debated whether to go to Cafe de Amigo (due to assorted negative feedback which people had heard), we finally decided at about 2.ish and still had to wait for a table to seat the 7 of us.

Most of us ordered baked rices. Looking around, it seemed like it was a favourite and usually that's a good indication to me that it's worth trying. We'd gotten wind that their HK Style Milk Tea is really good and I think most of us ended up ordering that in some way or form. I had the Cold Milk Tea and that's definitely got my thumbs up. I love a strong tea and this place makes it to just that perfect amount of sweetness. Emily agreed with me. Here's also the photo of her with her Tomato Stewed Beef (her comments: sauce very watery, beef very rough).

As per feedback I'd got from my aunt, service was slow. There was a definitely a good 15 minute in between the service of the first and last meal. Strangely enough, Mary's Club Sandwich arrived much later than my baked Portugese Chicken Rice. Although I suppose you can put that down to inexperience and really, I think it can be expected that nothing really runs that smoothly in the first 2 weeks of a cafe opening up.

Mind you, by the time we ordered, we were already told that their 'special' was unavailable, spaghetti was unavailable and there was probably something else. Inadequate planning or just too many people going there to try it out? Your call. On the whole, I found the food there to be satisfactory; on par with Macau Cafe in terms of serving sizes and price. I'll probably go back there cause it's another one of those Chinese places to go grab arvo tea or a light meal. Nothing fancy.