Somewhere in March ’07 a group of friends and I went to Cosafe Maid Cafe in Chijmes (it’s a short distant walk from City Hall MRT). That night it happened to be school night, so all the waitresses (maids?) wore school girl outfit instead of French maid outfit.
To start, I kinda like the overall ambiance. But that’s probably Chijmes in general. Chijmes is pretty ;)
Okay this is the front door, but we didn’t go through it at all. In fact I wanna know what’s inside, because it looks so secluded. The seating area is outside, open air. I don’t know what they do if it rains.
I’m a bit disappointed on their uniforms. French maid is much more interesting than school girl. School girl is just.. dull.. ordinary.. and it reminds me about Lolita syndrome. Especially on Singaporean girls, who are mostly bonny skinny. Maybe it’s just me, but it looked like most guys that come to the place threw each other sheepish perverted smile and/or body language. As if they felt guilty to actually come to the cafe just for the girls. *roll eyes* This included our guy friends, mind you. SHAME ON YOU GUYS! :D
As a side note, I hate to disappoint you, but none of the maids was underage :). I heard the boss was 16 years old that like to cosplay though. That’s almost underage, isn’t it? So that’s how this cafe got to be. We saw the mother and the brother however. The boss was probably too busy cosplaying somewhere else. I got a feeling she doesn’t really get involved in this cafe thingy. The 16 yo old boss idea may just be there for publication purposes. *shrug*
While waiting for the food, we took picture with one of the schoolgirl/maid, but she looked just like one of our friends, hiding her number one asset, the costume! The management should have some kind of training for the maids about taking good pictures with the customers. In fact, the management should train them much much more in basic waitressing for a start. I don’t know about the other maid cafes, as I’ve never been into one, but from what I heard they maids are supposed to ACT LIKE MAIDS and not waitresses in maid costumes! What’s the difference you would ask, well YOU tell me :). Just on top of my head, shouldn’t they act more Japanese-y? You know, with the yelling of Japanese words everywhere, get all cute and excited, etc. Most of the time the maids just stood around or talked to each other. We had to ask for our water to be filled in all the time, when there were free maids everywhere near our table. They were lousy waitresses, and even lousier maids. BAD SERVICE.
Most of us ordered their signature dish, Baby Pork Ribs. It SO NOT justified the price! Cost about $20 I think. It didn’t come out hot, as if they grilled it a long time ago. The ribs was indeed really big, but it’s just meh. Most of the taste came from the bbq-like sauce. I chose mashed potatoes instead of fries and it was very little :(. The fries were actually quite good though (stole some from Arti’s plate), they were huge. The last time I ate big fries was at KFC Australia, the only fast food I know that serves big french fries (as in each piece is individually big, not big serve).
Bandi ordered pizza that came out looking pretty pathetic. I don’t know why he ordered pizza in Japanese little cafe. It’s SO NOT matching. Arti ordered hamburger which didn’t look bad. We all also had fruit juices. I can’t even remember what I had, but it’s alright.
At the end of the night, the waitresses (maids?) had some kind of game. So we stuck around a little bit just to see what’s going on. It was just Japanese paper-scissor-rock ‘game’. Each table has one person to represent to have a go against the maid. We sent Antono but he disappointed us :). I think they had bookmarks or the like in their baskets and you’d get one if you win.
To conclude, the only thing memorable about this cafe is how bad the service and the food were. Paying that much money and with all the hype being a maid cafe, people have higher standard of what they expect from the waitresses (I can’t stop calling them waitresses cuz that’s how they acted like!). The next time you want to bring someone over (that would be the only reason I would go if there’s a next time), go only for a drink. The food is so not worth it. I guess the maid costumes would still attract people (note the use of words ‘maid costumes’ and not ‘maids’).
Last picture is a shot from Bandi with his new SLR. It looks good except for the branch of tree that blocked almost a quarter of the picture unintentionally. Still, the credit goes to him for showing us the pretty Chijmes :). The next time we go to Chijmes, we planned to try Hog’s Breath.
Cosafe Maid Cafe
30 Victoria Street
#01-11 CHIJMES
Singapore
Plus: Waitresses dressed in interesting costumes. Pretty good ambience (at night, when it doesn’t rain). Fruit juice is nice.
Minus: No maids, just waitresses in maid costumes. Bad food, or to be fair, bad baby ribs and pizza. Expensive food for its quality. The girls were pretty nice, but they didn’t know how to waitress.
