SINGAPORE: Fish soup is a classic part of Singaporean cuisine, a comfort food that many people enjoy in their favourite hawker centres. It can be served with or without milk, depending on one’s preference. But getting charged an additional fifty cents for the milk in one netizen’s fried fish meat bee hon soup came as a big surprise to her.
“Hmmm… I didn’t know Fish soup if wanna add milk must pay $0.50 now… Is it the norm nowadays?,” a Facebook user who goes by Ay Zee wrote on the COMPLAINT SINGAPORE page on Thursday (Jan 27).
She posted a photo of the receipt of her order from the same day at Vivo City Kopitiam, where it can be seen that she was charged $6.50 for the soup and another $.50 for the additional soup.
Since late 2021, with extreme weather affecting harvests and supply chain issues stemming from the Covid-19 pandemic, food prices have gone up. Russia’s attack on Ukraine in February 2022 made the problem even worse.
This has meant smaller portion sizes, or, as in Ay Zee’s case, food vendors have begun to charge for ingredients that used to be free.
But netizens appeared to tend to blame the vendors.
“Sad, now we degrade until like this…no compassion, no feeling, no joy, no caring, just want extra money,” wrote one.
Ay Zee responded, “yar, I was like, since they’re charging me for the milk, they’d better not skimp & put so little.”
Another commenter noted, “Spring onions or coriander quite a nos of stalls do not provide anymore. mee siam no more koo-chye, mostly cutting corners.”
And when one netizen pointed out that she had to pay an additional $.20 for a takeaway box, Ay Zee wrote, “20¢ for tapao is normal lah. But milk is part of the ingredients in fish soup.”
The netizen later agreed that “charging the milk is really too over.”
“Cutting corners and compromise on quality and taste of the food, in time to come, will lose clients,” another commenter wrote, also asking “can’t the sellers share the costs with us and not simply pass all the adiditional costs to the consumers”?
Another netizen had heard of an additional charge for milk in fish soup as well.
Still, this is easier to deal with than a story from last month, when a customer and a hawker got scalded after the hawker refused to sell fish soup with two bowls of rice and both literally ended up in hot soup.
/TISG