Nice enough food but nothing special, pay less and eat just as well at pretty much any of the other seafood restaurants in the area. The only praise I will give is that their presentation is perhaps a bit nicer but that is about it...and even that is subjective.
First impression on the outside, their fish tanks are empty and have no choice compared to the other establishments. I ignored this initial warning sign, it’s 1 star isn’t it?
First impression when inside, it’s lunchtime and there’s just the 3 of us and one other table whilst the other restaurants we walked past to get here were all packed. This is the second warning sign I ignored, it’s 1 star remember?
When ordering from the menu, the actual price you will pay is unclear as you ask for quantity and type of seafood, they try their best to not make it clear either why saying the fish could we between 600 to 1200g but let’s see what we have. Considering that you are paying by the 100g and you never get to see the produce, they just bring an empty red bucket next to the table when you’re ordering just for show. Remember my 1st point ? Then they say they go and get the fish and prawns and abalone and shrimp from outside but never come back and show you.
The food, it’s ok but not worth mentioning. The fish was over cooked by the way. Steamed to absolute hard as f@@k is what I muttered quietly in Hakka to myself. My wife and son speak English so they wouldn’t have understood.
The bill is the best bit, the seafood items are wrapped up in 1 figure, 888hk$, that’s a very convenient number isn’t it, lucky for some too as 8 is for most Chinese (it’s also a pi55 take for non suspecting foreigners or tourists of which I am despite my immediate family all originally from Sai Kung). Anyway 888 is not too overly priced for what we ordered but we ordered very little and they were unwilling to break down that number. Then the underhand bit. There’s another number, can’t remember exactly but it was around $hk550. Asked the waiter what it was. Cleaning and gutting the seafood!?!? Nowhere does it say this is a separate charge, at no time was I told there is a separate charge for this and too be fair, at no point did I ask them to gut and clean the seafood I had chosen but never got to see live in that red bucket despite cleaning obviously being necessary before cooking. Why don’t they add this to the price per g in the menu? We obviously didn’t order enough food as we wanted a light lunch and only 1 large beer to share as they can just bump up the bill to whatever they want. No breakdown of the 550$ either, I must have been paying an expert fish gutter for all of 10 minutes. That’s over 3000hk$ an hour. Who needs to spend years studying law or medicine when you can earn those rates cleaning fish.
To top it all off a service charge is added on top along with some other sundries items which they didn’t explain, probably the cost of some other normal restaurant practice like waiting on us.
The 3 of us spoke English throughout and when ordering. The restaurant staff hedged their bets and thought we wouldn’t understand them talking. I speak Cantonese and Hakka fluently when I want to so I can tell you now that I don’t suspect that I was being ripped off, I know I was being ripped off. It’s upsetting to realise that people from my ‘home’ town are treating customers like this.
One final tip, don’t use the toilet before the meal, it’s a disaster zone that hasn’t seen a clean for a long time but they are probably figuring out how to add the cost of that to your bill first.More