Dehappy Seafood Restaurant Penang — Restaurant in George Town

2 experiences I don’t quite like about this place.

1, the guy who serves us, always push too much on the most expensive items.

2, we ordered the live mantis prawns. We ate 2 of it, and it was tasteless. Doesn’t has any freshness or sweetness of the mantis prawns. And the same guy who serves us, told us it’s because of the chef’s cooking maybe doesn’t suits our taste, and it’s not about the cooking. We eat seafoods quite often, we knew what is fresh and what is not. The live mantis prawns at least need to have the meat a little more firm than the frozen one, and also it’s more sweet. This one is totally the opposite. Meat is not firm and the meat has no taste AT ALL. We made complaints, and they removed the mantis prawns from the bill.

Below are the taste of the foods Wine steam live prawn. That’s what live prawns suppose to eat as. So sweet and tender! 10/10

Coffee chicken. It has no coffee taste at all. Not so recommended. I’m not sure why the guy who serves us told us it’s their recommendation. Not good. 2/10.

Tofu with eggplants. This one is real good. Only I think the sauce is a little bit too less. 8/10

Stir fried vege. Nothing much to brag about. Not bad not very good too. 7/10

Kam heong lala. The lala not that sweet or fresh and the kam heong has too much of curry spices. I believe they boiled d lala first then only stir fried with the sauce. 4/10

Mantis prawns. I don’t want to talk about it anymore. -100/10

Bbq crab. It’s not bbq. It’s more like boiled crab and bbq for awhile. The fresh crab meat become not so nice to eat. It says in bbq, but there’s no burnt in the crab shell at all. And weird thing is the main part of the crab body is warm but the claws are cold. No doubt the meat is sweet. But the way they cook it is so wrong. 2/10

Sg bihun, normal. 4/10. The prawns come with it are so not fresh.

Teochew mee. Not so good. Only taste a little better with sambal belacan. 3/10.

Overall taste: 4/10 other than prawns and tofu, the rest can skip. Cleanliness: 6/10 Toilet: 5/10 (there’s a toilet for disabled) Price: $$$ Service: 2/10. The guy who took our orders are so annoying and the rest of the waiters are just stand a side to chit chat. Parking: by the road side, there’s a per entrance car park before 7-11, not sure how it charge. Comeback: not at all! Recommend: not at all!

For me it’s more like a tourist chopping place.

Reply to the owner. Do you get it? It’s not about the chef cooking is not suitable for my taste. First of all, seafoods if they had been boiled before they were being to cook, it’s just a waste of it. The texture the freshness of the seafoods will just go wasted. I’ve explained to the guy who served us there, how can a fresh and lively seafoods lost its sweetness and texture after being cooked? I reduced it to one star due to the stubbornness of you guys. If I can, I will give minus stars...

This is going to be a long one so get ready for a doozy! So this spot came highly recommended.....famous Hong Kong stars came here.......the whole thing. Food, atmosphere, and service was great. The 1 bad part was the mantis prawn.....it tasted very sub par.....but we ate it all, whatever. In came the bill and I was shocked,  848 Ringgit for 6 mantis prawns. To put it in perspective, that's my entire week's hotel or 500 bottles of water or 800 trips to the bathroom. I called the manager over and said I was very unsatisfied. I told them granted, we ate all the food, and I didn't know the price before I ate it as a family member did all of the ordering, I mentioned multiple times that was my fault. I told them the fact that I ate it all then complained was also my fault. I said I don't want to have this conversation, I don't want to complain about the quality of the food but 848 Ringgit for shrimp in Malaysia that was subpar is not acceptable. I had my credit card out on the table and asked how they wanted to handle the situation. They proceeded to say that I cannot complain about food after finishing all of it and that everything was on CCTV possibly implying that I wanted to skimp out on the bill which I never alluded to. I asked several times if they were willing to do anything to satisfy me and they basically said zero, there's nothing they'll do for me and that I simply needed to pay the bill in full. They did offer to serve me more watermelon on the house but that doesn't really make up for 848 Ringgit of bad shrimp.

My family was very upset on the way home and my mother in law mentioned that they could've taken the live shrimp in the back and stored that while serving us different dead shrimp instead. Of course this is all speculation but who knows what happened.

I never said I'd post a bad review as anyone is able to do that and they should be worried about me doing so but apparently not. We're a family of 9 with elders and young kids, I'm not trying to play games nor scam anyone. Anyway.......I strongly do not believe they handled the situation correctly but just wanted to share...

The service was excellent and the staff were attentive, but I took off stars for the pushiness when ordering and the tom yum that didn't taste like tom yum.

First, when ordering, the guy who took our order never stopped "suggesting" the most expensive items. The first thing he suggested was the lobster which would've cost approximately RM400. Then, when we were looking at the fishes, again, he suggested the most expensive fish. Same with the prawns, etc.

That was a very, very uncomfortable experience. After that, there was no way we were going to trust his recommendations for other dishes, even if they were genuine recommendations. I'm sure there are naive customers who can be fooled or persuaded/convinced to buy the expensive dishes, but the ordering experience would have been so much better if he had suggested one expensive item, one mid-range priced item, and one lower-priced item. The fact that he constantly and predictably gave the most expensive suggestions made him untrustworthy.

Second, the tom yum was way too sweet and not sour enough. Tom yum is supposed to be a perfect blend of sour and spicy. I've eaten tom yum in Thailand. I've also eaten tom yum in Malaysia cooked by Thais. The tom yum in this restaurant tasted nothing like the tom yum I've eaten before. It was 70% sweet and 30% heat. Also, the shrimp in the tom yum was not fresh. As a seafood restaurant, I expected all the seafood to be fresh. However, the tom yum shrimp tasted just like the ones from frozen packs.

What a disappointment. The above two reasons, together with the food prices (I can get lobster in butter sauce cheaper than RM400 in the US), are why tonight's dinner was...