Tourist Trap - DO NOT PATRONISE

Sin Hoi Sai
55 Tiong Bahru Road, #01-59
Tel: +65 6223 0810

It is quite depressing to realize that you cannot, for some reason or another, return to a restaurant that you used to enjoy going to in the past. It is one thing if it closes, or if you are moving away from the city forever; I am sure that has happened to many people, in many places. It is another if the quality drops beyond a point where you will no longer patronize the place – as in the case of Cashion’s Eat Place in my final year in DC. That is a sad thing in its own right. But it is a terrible scenario when you choose to no longer patronize a particular restaurant because they have changed their business practices for the worse. I recently went back to a perennial favourite – Sin Hoi Sai in Tiong Bahru – and was so disgusted with my experience there that I cannot bring myself to return.

Sin Hoi Sai has been a mainstay of the tze char scene for decades, and has built up a reputation for solidity and reliability. It is especially popular amongst night owls because both branches open till late (or should I say till early in the morning). That differentiating point aside, the food is generally good to great, with few misses. The wok hei of their dishes is there and their portions are always pretty generous. Despite it undergoing a modernization facelift in recent years, the original outlet at Tiong Bahru also retained what was – for me – the most distinctive part of their restaurant: the alleyway al fresco seating.

Countless early-morning trips to Sin Hoi Sai for a plate of 月光河 after a night at the clubs have cemented some very sentimental memories for me; and coupled with the fact that this is also a regular choice for gatherings whenever my old rugby team-mates want to get together for a meal, means that this place holds a special place in my heart. Since moving back to Singapore I have only been back to Sin Hoi Sai twice, and while I have never been wowed at this place, it has always delivered tasty tze char.

(月光河 – The Moon’s Reflection in the Water: The Chinese have a penchant for flowery and beautiful-sounding names for their dishes, and this is no different. Playing on the double meaning of 河 to refer to both a body of water, and as a shoftform for 河粉 (hor fun, or wide rice noodles) – this is a simple dish of noodles stir-fried with seafood in a dark soy sauce, served with an egg cracked into the middle of the dish.)

The popularity of this place has also surged on the back of many favourable reviews, both in the local and overseas press, and a few years back the New York Times even saw fit to recommend it. However, the good thing is that the restaurant is seldom crowded, and you can always find a table (unless you have a huge group of more than 10, but in which case it’d be hard for you to find a table, or tables, anywhere). I can see why the NYT would recommend it too, for it is a good place to ease foreigners into street food, and is a passable representation of what Singaporeans eat without being too much of a culture shock. You don't have to eat in the alleyway if you don't want to, and the indoors part of the restaurant is well ventilated and quite comfortable. When Jose and Angel were in town for a visit, I brought them here - which I believe says a lot about it. The fact that I was willing to take Jose, the man who taught me how to cook, to this place for one out of a limited number of meals he had in Singapore - meant that I really thought it was worth going to.

The other day I had a craving for salted-egg crab, which Sin Hoi Sai does a very good version of; and coerced my eating companions to make the trip down to Tiong Bahru. (The other advantage for me is that it is near my office, and I don’t have to pay ERP to get there during peak hours.) There is quite a bit of street parking available around the area, and if you are really unlucky you can always park at the multi-storey carpark at Tiong Bahru market.

We didn’t take very long to decide what we wanted (since we already had an idea of what that was) so when we flagged down the nearest waitress we were surprised to find out that she could only take drink orders. Some of the top-end Chinese restaurants are like this – and have a strict hierarchy in place amongst the waitstaff. Usually there are the captains, then the normal waitstaff, then the runners and bussers – and they each have very defined tasks, and what they can or cannot do. At some of these posh places, only the captains can take food orders, and I’ve been in some restaurants where the runners are not even allowed to place the dish on your table, but have to stand by the table and wait for the captains to do it. There is a rationale behind this silliness – usually only the captains take the food orders because they are the ones who have been briefed by the chef on the specials for the day, what to push and what not to; and they are usually the ones with the experience and the knowledge to help guide the diner in his or her choices. The posher places also have the captains present the food because they are supposed to introduce the dish and say some nice things about it. Unfortunately this practice is slowly dying and I haven’t heard anyone do a proper job of introducing the dish (beyond saying its name) in years.

In any case Sin Hoi Sai is not that kind of posh place, so it is a little weird to have that waiter segmentation. But that is not our concern. What was our concern, though, was the most ridiculous example of product-pushing I have ever encountered. The waitress asked us for our drink orders – to which I replied Chinese tea – and one of my dining companions wanted to know more about the cold, homemade drinks they had to offer, whether they be lemon tea, lime juice, barley water or something along those lines. The waitress recommended aloe-vera. At the time, we didn’t think it odd, and I even thought it was some aloe vera herbal tea, so I switched my order to that as well. What was eventually brought out was an aloe vera dessert – which I’m sure was delicious, but given our circumstances we had to send back. We gave this a lot of thought, but were nowhere close to figuring out an answer. Why would anyone upsell you on dessert when all you wanted was a drink before dinner? This was absolutely unbelievable.

That in itself is probably not enough for me to denounce Sin Hoi Sai. What would do it, would be the exorbitant prices. We were charged $60/kilo for the salted egg crab, which I suppose could be considered restaurant prices, especially given that crabs are not in season. Yet Sin Hoi Sai is not a restaurant, and that said I would also be hard-pressed to charge that kind of prices even in a restaurant. The company I work for runs a few restaurants, and I’ve been to the market enough to know the rough prices for mud crabs. The importer gets them for $6-$12 a kilo, and as a consumer you can typically get them live in the market for around $18-$20 a kilo. The market price for the cooked crabs ranges from $25-$45 a kilo for tze char places, or $45 - $65 for restaurants. Now I know transportation costs a fair bit, especially for “cold chain” logistics (for live seafood this typically just means Styrofoam boxes and lots of ice), but $60 a kilo for crabs when you are sitting in an alleyway eating them is a little difficult to justify. My impression of what crabs cost could be outdated (for I don't eat them often), but for that kind of price I’d expect a scantily-clad model to break open the shells and feed me the pieces of meat.

Now I say that in jest, because deep down I know that these prices are par for the course when it comes to tourists. A large number of the popular seafood places are tourist traps, and charge silly, silly prices. (A portion of these margins no doubt goes to the concierges at the hotels, for steering tourists toward these places.) What’s interesting is that at some places you even get a locals-only discount – usually 20% and if you know the management, can go up to 50%. That they are able to do that gives you an idea of the kind of margins they are making. Sin Hoi Sai has never been cheap. But for it to make the jump from slightly-overpriced local favourite to outright tourist trap is a sad development indeed.

This wouldn’t be so difficult to swallow if the food was not good, in which case I would happily go on my way and never eat at this place again. The fact is that I do think the food is pretty good. But it’s not good enough to justify high prices and shameless (if illogical) upselling.