Zomato South Africa holds a competition every Friday afternoon at 3pm called #FoodieFriday on Twitter. They have a theme as a hint and you need to answer 10 questions correctly and in the quickest time to win.

I have been playing this game for 5 weeks straight when it finally paid off! I WON! What did I win you ask? I won a R150 voucher to AJ’s in the Park. This was quite exciting for me because I have never been there and who isn’t excited about free food?

So today is June 16, 2016 and I have just visited AJ’s in the Park and here’s what free food tastes like.

On arrival the restaurant was exactly what I thought it would be. It was in the clubhouse in Craighall but there was no electricity and there just happened to be a huge amount of people there. They were completely understaffed and it was obvious from the second we arrived as there one patron who came indoors to ask if there were any waiters that I can help her.

The service was slow but because 50% of our food was free, we decided to wait. After getting served our drinks we immediately ordered foos because we knew there would be a long wait for the meal.

What I saw was so bizarre. The owner/manager came back with another generator to power up the rest of the restaurant. After the manager came in, I noticed an elderly couple come sit down and order Iced Tea. A couple of minutes, I saw the same ownder/manager shouting at his staff. I have one policy when it comes to restaurants: Never ever, shout at your staff in front of patrons. It takes less than a minute to call them aside into a private area and reprimand them. This really got my blood boiling but under the circumstances of being understaffed and having no electricity, I let the whole thing pass.

So our food arrived and after my experience so far, I was not expecting anything good. To my surprise the sirloin and the t-bone were absolutely and incredibly delicious. It was beyond my expectations and I really enjoyed every second of it.

While enjoying my meal I witnessed the same manager shouting at the staff, telling them to stop allowing people to order pizzas because there are too many orders and not enough people to make the food. This was totally uncalled for because it was not the waiter’s fault that no pizza was being made.

Then I witnessed a man who I have no idea if she washed his hands or not, start making pizza. I was appalled that this was allowed. In that second, I was so grateful that I decided not to order the pizza because I would have been disgusted at the fact that this random guy not wearing a hairnet was making food and rubbing his nose.

Anyways, we ate,paid and ran away as fast as possible.

I don’t think that I will be coming back to that place anytime soon. They lost my respect the second they started shouting at their staff.

For what it’s worth, I give Aj’s in the Park a 4/10.

PS: it was only their food that scored them 4. Everything else was a ZERO.

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