A 35-year-old diner and four friends feasted on a steamed
fish dish at a restaurant in
Resorts World Sentosa
(RWS). At the end of the meal, upon receiving the bill, his jaw hit
the ground.
What seemed like a simple dish ended up costing a whopping
S$1,224.
The diner, who only wanted to be known as Mr Liu, took his four
friends to RWS’
Feng Shui Inn
restaurant on June 12. He had initially asked for marble goby,
better known locally as “soon hock”, but was told there was no
stock for the fish.
A waiter then recommended the
white sultan fish instead.
The group agreed, without enquiring about the cost of the
dish. But when the bill arrived, the five diners were shocked
to find that the single sultan fish, weighing 1.8kg, set them back
by a staggering S$1,224.
“(The waiter) didn’t mention the price (of the fish), 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 the fish during payment and the
restaurant responded by giving him a 15% discount on the bill as a
gesture of goodwill.
“The customer has the right to know and the restaurant should
have made clear its price so we could decide whether it was worth
it,” Mr Liu said.
In response to the incident, an RWS spokesman claims
that the practice of not disclosing menu prices is common in
upscale restaurants. “It is not always appropriate to state menu
prices to high-end customers who have come to expect a certain
discretion when they entertain high-level guests, ” he
explains.
RWS conceded that the incident could have been a “lapse of
judgement” but it was smoothed over quickly with an
on-the-spot discount.
But is S$68 per 100g for a sultan fish a reasonable amount?
A quick comparison with Capital Restaurant, which has been
selling sultan fish for 36 years, reveals that
the dish can go for as low as S$6 per 100g. This is less
than a tenth of Fengshui Inn’s price tag on the fish.
Chef Pung Lu Tin, 50, of Seafood International Market and
Restaurant, explained the sultan fish is sought-after because it
was not easy to catch. He added that its meat was “very
smooth”.
“The flesh is tender and snow white. It’s a wild river fish, so
it eats fruits that drops from trees and bears the fragrance
of fruit,” Chef Huang Ching Biao, 58, kitchen operations
director at Jin Shan restaurant at MBS told The New
Paper.
But despite its draw, both chefs added that they have
not come across any commanding such a high price. One seafood
distributor known only as Mr Lee even described the price of
the fish at Fengshui Inn as “outrageous”.
This seafood shocker is reminiscent of an incident
that occurred in March last year, where six American
tourists were charged S$239 for a mere eight tiger prawns at Newton
hawker centre.
The stall involved had its licence suspended for three
months by the
National Environment
Agency (NEA) for breaching licencing conditions.
Incidents like these throw the spotlight on questionable
charging practices in Singapore. For a country positioning itself
as a tourism hub, these bad dining experiences are sure to leave a
bitter after-taste.
