SINGAPORE: A woman expressed disappointment after the server at the eatery where she purchased fish bee hoon soup refused to add more soup when asked.
In a post on the COMPLAINT SINGAPORE Facebook page on Friday (Apr 12), a Ms Jentry Chua wrote, “Actually I don’t want to make a post but I am utterly disappointed with this shop. We went to HK Street at Balestier, opposite the famous chicken rice shop. We went there because we like the sliced fish bee hoon soup, this time we ordered a medium size to share so that we can order more dishes.”
Hong Kong Street Food Chun Tat Kee has several outlets and is quite well known for its XO fish slice bee hoon soup, a dish that has gotten good reviews online.
Ms Chua’s experience was not so pleasant, however. She wrote that after the server had dished out two portions of the soup, there wasn’t much soup left, only noodles and fish. She then asked the server to top up the soup, something that’s allowed in other eateries.
However, Ms Chua wrote that the server said, “We have been operating over a decade, we never add soup for customer!”
She wrote in her post, “Never doesn’t mean cannot, right? The soup is the essence of this dish, I am willing to pay for the top-up. So last night we had sliced fish bee hoon dry.”
A few commenters on her post, however, suggested that Ms Chua could have just ordered plain soup with no other ingredients. However, this is not always possible, especially if this item is not entered in an eatery’s POS system.
One commenter told her that she could have had an additional order of fish bee hoon soup and just taken home the leftovers.
When The Independent Singapore reached out to Ms Chua for comment, she told us, “Why will I order another bowl of noodles just for the soup? And I need to bring back the noodles and fish with little soup home?”
It’s not uncommon for some eateries to provide free soup with the dishes they offer, especially if it’s just broth, which does not cost very much.
On the other hand, it’s possible that people who work in the Food & Beverage industry, especially hawkers, have gotten wary of offering freebies given the high cost of food items as well as rent.
A hawker’s daughter made the news a few years ago for calling Singaporeans “shameless” in an Instagram post for always asking for freebies at her parents’ stall—the free herbal soup and homemade sambal chili that go with the duck rice her father served for S$ 3.00, even if they did not order anything. /TISG
Read also: One hawker’s daughter has solutions for what’s wrong with the hawker culture