Hai Boey Seafood

Went to this place in Gertak Sanggul for seafood....just a spur of a thought at the moment to have seafood on Sunday evening:)

I have read about this place previously in a couple of blogs and there has been a mixed reviews...some praised and some criticized....usual; a matter of preference:)

But the thing that most of them said was that this place was actually pretty famous and established its name in the seafood world.

Hmmmm.....so we decided to give it a try....initially I mentioned Jumbo Seafood Village but it will take another 3km....so we decided to just try this out although I also had second thoughts and wanted to play safe and go back to our usual seafood haunt in Teluk Kumbar which we passed by along the way.....Good Friend Seafood:)

Anyway, we are here and that's that.....and similar to most of the seafood restaurants here in Penang, they are located near the sea and also built on the sands.

Pretty good view and the first thing I noticed when I was here was the Reserved sign on most of the tables....which got me to believe that this place must be indeed famous or good to have so many reservations.

We quickly settled down; ordered herbal tea.....

Then the lady came over to take our orders...and man, this lady was pretty aggressive in recommending their items.

She first mentioned fish; which we ordered...cooked in their signature style....their trademark dish. I had a hard time to choose between the grouper and also the black promfret; in which I posted the question back to the lady who said most will go for the grouper.

Fine...since I kinda liked grouper anyway:)

Then she recommended crabs...and I was tempted to ask her whether the shells are removed:p

You see, PickyEater has this penchant and reservation when it comes to eating crabs as I do not know and dislike to remove the shells...pretty troublesome if you ask me.

So usually, Daddy or Mummy will help me out with that...yaya, I am spoilt BRAT:p

I was pretty happy when I was in Shanghai as most of the time, the restaurants there serve you with the shells removed...and I am serious, even the prawns had their shells removed....

I am so with Shanghai hehehehe......

Anyway, we made a pass on crabs...then she asked us whether we want to try our aligator's tail and my eyes almost popped out. She mentioned it was fresh and just arrived that day but my friend was laughing so hard and sensed my discomfort and just told her to skip that.

I was choking inside...WHAT kind of place is this that serves such cruel, heartless and exotic dish????!!!!

Never mind that it was featured in the newspapers before and also its nutritional value.....if you want PickyEater to try that out.....you must be out of your mind or you can do it...over my dead body....seriously....

Then she mentioned prawns and again, we ordered their signature style.....

Then we wanted one more dish; some greens despite her endless effort to get us to order lobsters, shells, etc.

Nah...we settled for a plate of stir-fry vegetables and waited patiently for our food to arrive.

She wanted us to order more and we told her; there's only 2 of us - 3 dishes would suffice and besides, how can we finish so much food with 1 and a half person....hahaha.....:)

First to arrive was the vegetables; the Stir-fry Yau Mak....a skewered type of vegetables but pretty crunchy and juicy:) I am not sure of the English name of this vegetable though...will find out...

It was little oily but oklar...nothing significant of spectacular about this dish.

Remember, I am here to taste their speciality since this is supposed to be one famous seafood restaurant....although we didn't order much but we can't really finish them anyway, so why waste food...LOL:p

Ooo ya, while I was busy taking pics, I noticed one guy sitting at a table across me who brought a Panasonic Lumix and was also taking pics...probably another food blogger:p

Next was the prawns; cooked in their signature style. Hmmmm...this was truly disappointing; I think even the presentation didn't interest you....it was just slightly fried prawns with some minced garlic. Prawns tasted a bit hard and not really nice....really very disappointed...

Rating: 2/5

Then their signature style steamed fish arrived...they actually put it in a claypot and frankly, there's nothing special about it; it just tasted like normal steamed fish to me. Oh, I should mention that the grouper was slightly overcooked....I think so far, the only person who knows how to steam grouper and garoupa at the right temperature and keeping the texture soft and delicate which perfectly suits my taste buds is my one and only MUMMY!!!~

She deserves a mention here as I felt that all these chefs out there should feel ashamed of themselves that they do not know the culinary art of steamed fish and moreover fish with delicate flesh such as grouper and garoupa......sighhhhhh.

As such, much as I love steamed fish, I am usually skeptical to order them when I dine out.

And remember, I am one picky eater and since my favourite is fish, I am definitely very particular about fish. In fact, most of my colleagues actually start to refer to me as a fish expert...hahaha...a food reviewer:)

Spread of all our ordered food...

Despite that, we still finished our food and when the bill came; it was about RM54.60 which was quite pricey considering the serving portion.

However, after close observation, the high price actually came from fish....it was RM32...and it was a small fish; about 400gm so I guess it costs roughly about RM8/100gm which should be reasonable (fish experts says:p ) as grouper are usually quite pricey.

The vege only costs RM6 and the prawns; Rm12 for 5 medium sized prawns.