Customer complaint: S$18 sweet & sour pork but almost no pork inside, mostly cornstarch served by restaurant

SINGAPORE: A man took to social media after getting disappointed with his order of sweet and sour pork, which he claimed was mostly cornstarch instead of actual meat.

On the COMPLAINT SINGAPORE page on Sunday (Dec 1), a Facebook user, James Joseph, posted videos and photos of his order on the platform.

Mr James wrote that he had ordered takeaway sweet and sour pork chop at Lai Huat restaurant at Bedok Food Centre. He claimed that the meal was “80 per cent cornstarch,” implying that there was hardly any pork in the pork chop dish, for which he paid S$18.

In the short video he posted, a woman’s voice can be heard saying, “This is not pork; this is all glow.”

In the longer video, the woman repeats, “This is not pork.”

It shows someone taking a piece from the meal and cutting into it. The woman explains that the piece was “all flour” and asks, “Where is the pork, then?”

The person who had cut the piece open is then seen taking another from the dish. When they cut it open, the woman appears not to find any meat inside it either, and she says, “You see? All flour.”

Commenters have also expressed dissatisfaction with the dish, pointing out that a dish made mainly of cornstarch is unhealthy.

The Independent Singapore has contacted Mr James and Lai Huat Signatures for further comments or updates.

Read also: Shrinkflation woes: GST increased just 1% but food reduced to “kids meal portion” that looked like “leftovers”

With the cost of raw ingredients rising over the past few years, it has not been unusual for Singapore diners to say they’ve witnessed “shrinkflation,” the practice of serving smaller servings or replacing more costly ingredients with cheaper ones.

Earlier this year, a netizen complained that their meal had shrunk “by 40 per cent.”

“A simple chicken rice went from S$3.50 to S$3.70 to S$3.80 to S$4.20 in a neighbourhood area over six months… So what did I pay for? A 1/5 bowl of rice and a few (pieces of) meat…,” a customer wrote in an online forum.

In October, after a diner was served very small pieces of butter at a Tampines coffee shop, she wrote that “shrinkflation had seriously set in Singapore.” /TISG

Read also: Shrinkflation: Diners are saying KFC chicken pieces are smaller than condiment packets