Hai Wai Tian Restoran

My siblings and I had planned to throw my mum her lunar 60th bdae since last year. Instead of celebrating her chinese bdae last year we postpone it to this year celebrating her actual 60th bdae instead cos last year it would be too near my brother's wedding. Mum was the one who decided to hold her bdae dinner at this Hai Wai Tian Restoran. I didnt spell restaurant wrongly cos this is a Malaysian based famous restraurant. Almost 10years ago, when i tagged along for Uncle M's Guodali, i had tried the food and it was very very good... so i had high expectation.

Our menu was suppose to be $888 then on the email it had a slashed with a discount we ordered this $688 menu... the prosperity bun on the menu refers to the pink big buns on the right pic... i had asked the manager if they could do a nicer platter esp for my mum cos its her 60th and he told me to pay $68 to make a huge bun that house smaller soutao in it... i said too expensive... cos there is a reason why i said so... 2 years ago when we celebrated mum's dinner within our own family at Noblehouse, i dun remember if we were charged or how much we had to top up but definitely we didnt need to pay $68! The Noblehouse had a very clean and nice presentation with chinese wordings written on the plate! Thats the most impressive presentaion so far! The manager at this restaurant then suggest me opting for a bigger bun for mum and pay $38... i gave in cos i wanted something more special for mum... so their presentation was the left pic...

According to my sis, everyone got alittle hungry while i was late for an hour... so uncle M ordered a platter of char siew and roast pork.... but this came after i arrived... this platter cost us $40 each table! it was fine to order extra food but sis and i really dun think the platter was worth that much! cos compared to the 烧蜡 (not sure if my La is right!) from my mum's favourite shop, this was pale... the one mum patronise isnt cheap either but we get much more and taste much better... lucky the 1st appetiser dish of 5 varieties was good! the little pear shaped was made of yam!

the prawn dish on the menu was changed but they only amended the chinese text and not the english.

the sharkfin soup i couldnt take... tasted only a little of the soup and it was rich but too bad i didnt get any shark fins swiming in my mouth! the roasted piglet was alright... i had prob higher expectation... it was nice but i dun know was it the service or where they placed our tables that made me kind of pissed with the management... i didnt like where they had our 3 tables where there are other customers sitting at the side next to us! the area was squeezy was it becos i had a big tummy? no! the kids had to walk thru slowly too! i had to make my aunt stand up from the other table so i could get out! the bun that went with the piglet was nice, different from the usual.

the fish was fresh, the prawns were huge and almost everyone like the sauce, the way the prawns were cooked! Our table had transfers from the kiddos table cos they were too busy playing and were all too full to swallow the big prawns! the abalone mushrooms sure tassted like real abalones! the way they had it served, i tot we had real abalones till i refered to the menu to see what this dish was called then i realised they were mushrooms!

the noodles was nice but i was super disappointed with the HOUSE SPECIALTY DESSERT! we had ordered tang yuen cos its a better choice over steamed milk pudding which i would have loved to try cos i was told its super nice... Tang Yuen cos for my mum's bdae its seems better more auspicious to end the dinner with this dessert esp when i was told its their HOUSE SPECIALTY! NOT!!!!! some of them had uncooked ones cos the floury dough was too thick, mine were cooked but kind thin and the sesame paste in them wasnt smooth but kind sandy feel! the gingery soup was TOO 辣! i love ginger but seriuosly this was too much for the dessert! Everyone kind of abandon the dessert...

earlier that morning, the manager even called me and asked me if the dessert can be changed to mooncake! cos he say mooncake festival was round the corner... i was thinking No i think Tang Yuen is a better dessert... and if they wanted to serve us mooncake it should be on the house! nope they didnt serve us any moon cake and worse.... i was unhappy with the way the waitress bang the bowls, serve the hot tea over my gal's head, bring the bowl of shark fins over my nephew's pram and he was sleeping in it... Service sucks! to make the experience worse for me, there is this uncle who i dun know whats his rank in the restaurant, he kept looking at his watch as we were about to jus start on dessert and he kept switching stared from his watch to our tables! made me so mad! mum sure had a better lunch experience that she was so impressed with the food to decide to have her dinner here... but with us, siblings paying $850 for each table... sis and i tot we could have held it somewhere else with personal room and better service!