S$1,200 Steam Fish at RWS Restaurant

yahoo News - 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.

Brutal Singapore Kallang Robbery....

Who says Singapore is safe???? Those punks from across the straits did all this just for a couple of hundred bucks??? L-O-S-E-R-S....

News from the lion city
THREE men who carried out what police described as a 'cruel' and 'inhumane' spate of attacks in the Kallang area on Sunday were arrested on Monday night.

The trio, all Sarawakians who worked here as cleaners and odd-job workers, went on a planned orgy of violent theft which has been rarely seen here.

The men, who stayed at a Syed Alwi Road lodging house, are believed to have hatched their crimes with four others. The gang went on a knife-wielding rampage that left one person dead, two others in intensive care and another with half his palm hacked off - all for $400 in cash and three cellphones.

Police have mounted a huge manhunt in several areas for the remaining four suspects who are believed to be part of the same gang. The seven may also be responsible for a few other similar slash-and-rob incidents in the area recently.

Said Criminal Investigation Department chief Ng Boon Gay: 'What the group had done was very violent. They not only robbed people of some small items... some hand phones and cash... they caused harm and killed one of them. These are all innocent victims. They had nothing to do with the culprits.'

The gang selected their quarry at random, stalking each one before pouncing on them with knives. All four were slashed and hacked before the gang made off with their belongings. They moved from one victim to another, covering a stretch of 2km in Kallang in the space of seven hours.

(For pictures, visit http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_533889.html)