Liang Kee Teochew

It was my dad’s 78^th birthday and being rather old school, it’s almost tradition that he would want his birthday dinner to be held at a traditional restaurant that serves up teochew fare. For my foreigner friends, «teochew» is a Chinese dialect.
My family has dined here on several occasions and most recently 2 weeks back, we felt the quality and taste were generally good with some hits and misses. But based on our visit yesterday, we realized that food quality consistency wasn’t there. Service was also not that great.
First ups, we had already pre-​reserved 2 cold crabs for dad’s dinner, but was told that they didn’t have stock this week. I think this is bad customer service, they had ample time to call me and inform me but didn’t do so. And they weren’t apologetic over it at all! Being dad’s birthday, I didn’t want to kick up a fuss. But this is major! We then decided to replace it with crayfish. Here’s what we ordered:
1. Longevity buns — ok
2. Cold dish — good
3. Pork ribs king — good
4. Sliced beef with spring onion — bad — the version we ate 2 wks ago was tender and succulent but yesterday’s were tough and starchy
5. Kai lan — ok
6. Crayfish — not great — Sambal sauce was a tad salty and it felt that the salt wasn’t evenly distributed
7. Winter melon chicken soup — good
8. Teochew style steamed pomfret — good
9. Efu noodles — no good — bland with only 1 sliced black mushroom on the plate — huh?!?
9. Dessert was Orh-​née or «steamed yam with pumpkin and ginkgo nuts» — ok
We didn’t order teochew braised duck or fish maw with sea cucumber because it wasn’t that great 2 weeks ago.
Overall, I think it could be a situation where the main chef was on medical leave and someone else took over, or he was having a bad day. Whatever it is, if it’s a special occasion family dinner you dine at your own risk. If it’s a normal family dinner, it’s fine.