SINGAPORE: A man who ordered grilled fish shared a photo of his meal, perhaps in shock that it came with exactly one piece of cabbage on the side and very little else.
The customer, Mr Afendi Rashid, remarked: “Now cabbage very expensive!” as the caption on his Feb 7 (Wednesday) post on the COMPLAINT SINGAPORE Facebook page.
We’ve heard of inflation, which has resulted in higher meal prices worldwide and “shrinkflation,” where higher prices have come alongside smaller portions, but a single piece of cabbage as part of a garnish is a bit next level.
Mr Afendi wrote that he ordered his meal from Ayam Penyet President, an Indonesian cuisine chain.
The restaurant does offer Grilled Tilapia Fish (Ikan Bakar) for S$13.90, and the photo on the eatery’s website matches the one Mr Afendi posted.
However, the photo also shows two pieces of cabbage larger than the customer’s picture.
And to address Mr Afendi’s caption, cabbage has not gotten very expensive.
A quick check on local grocery websites such as Sheng Shiong and NTUC FairPrice shows that you can get a 1300-gram head of cabbage for as little as S$1.55, and we can imagine that prices are even better at wet markets or from wholesalers.
The Independent Singapore has contacted Mr Afendi and the restaurant for further comments and updates.
Many of the commenters on his post also expressed their surprise at the meagre amount of cabbage served with his dish, with a number of netizens making fun of the post, saying they thought it was a piece of tissue paper, a fan blew it away, or that the fish had eaten the rest of the cabbage.
Another wrote that the eatery should have just not added the piece of cabbage as a garnish since it resulted in people just complaining about the puny portion.
One commenter wrote, however, “I think we all missed the point. It’s not an individual seller that’s doing this, you see more and more complains of shrinking portions and diminishing garnishes.
I believe this is all due to exploding cost for the sellers and these excluding costs are causing them to do such static things risking their own reputations and business.
So the question is why has cost risen so drastically recently then?” /TISG