擺明老屈!!!

S1,224---fish dish shocker
By Angela Lim – June 30th, 2010


A35-year-old diner and four friends feasted on a steamed fish dish at arestaurant in Resorts World Sentosa (RWS). At the end of the meal, uponreceiving the bill, his jaw hit the ground.

What seemed like a simple dish ended up costing a whopping S1,224.

Thediner, who only wanted to be known as Mr Liu, took his four friends toRWS’ Feng Shui Inn restaurant on June 12. He had initially asked formarble goby, better known locally as “soon hock”, but was told therewas no stock for the fish.

A waiter then recommended the whitesultan fish instead. The group agreed, without enquiring about the costof the dish. But when the bill arrived, the five diners were shocked tofind that the single sultan fish, weighing 1.8kg, set them back by astaggering S1,224.

“(The waiter) didn’t mention the price (of thefish), and we also didn’t think too much about it and just said okay,”Mr Liu told Lianhe Wanbao.

He complained about the price of thefish during payment and the restaurant responded by giving him a 15%discount on the bill as a gesture of goodwill.

“The customer hasthe right to know and the restaurant should have made clear its priceso we could decide whether it was worth it,” Mr Liu said.

Inresponse to the incident, an RWS spokesman claims that the practice ofnot disclosing menu prices is common in upscale restaurants. “It is notalways appropriate to state menu prices to high-end customers who havecome to expect a certain discretion when they entertain high-levelguests, ” he explains.

RWS conceded that the incident could havebeen a “lapse of judgement” but it was smoothed over quickly with anon-the-spot discount.

But is S per 100g for a sultan fish a reasonable amount?

Aquick comparison with Capital Restaurant, which has been selling sultanfish for 36 years, reveals that the dish can go for as low as S per100g. This is less than a tenth of Fengshui Inn’s price tag on the fish.

ChefPung Lu Tin, 50, of Seafood International Market and Restaurant,explained the sultan fish is sought-after because it was not easy tocatch. He added that its meat was “very smooth”.

“The flesh istender and snow white. It’s a wild river fish, so it eats fruits thatdrops from trees and bears the fragrance of fruit,” Chef Huang ChingBiao, 58, kitchen operations director at Jin Shan restaurant at MBStold The New Paper.

But despite its draw, both chefs added thatthey have not come across any commanding such a high price. One seafooddistributor known only as Mr Lee even described the price of the fishat Fengshui Inn as “outrageous”.

This seafood shocker isreminiscent of an incident that occurred in March last year, where sixAmerican tourists were charged S9 for a mere eight tiger prawns atNewton hawker centre.

The stall involved had its licencesuspended for three months by the National Environment Agency (NEA) forbreaching licencing conditions.

Incidents like these throw thespotlight on questionable charging practices in Singapore. For acountry positioning itself as a tourism hub, these bad diningexperiences are sure to leave a bitter after-taste.