Hock Lye Seafood Village

Out of curiosity, KW and I went and sampled Hock Lye Seafood Village off Jelutong Expressway last night.. and boy, I wish I could say 'it's as good as most floggers claimed it was' but we had nothing but complaints...


I read from several blogs that they offer pretty reasonably-priced, fresh seafood (without having to travel out from the island) and their drunken live prawns being their signature dish, it raised quite a bit of my curiosity, even my long-time friend MCF had a good review.

Their 'ample' car park (not really ample during peak season)


We reached at about 7:15pm and already the place was jam-packed with people - mostly already eating. We waited for a table for a good 15 minutes or so, then had our orders taken. Their drunken prawns were out of stock already so we had to settle for some other dishes instead.




Being ill-prepared (since we didn't really plan this ahead), we just ordered whatever they recommended.

The wait time was simply outrageous - we waited from about 7:40pm to about 9:15pm, with continuous reminders to the staff, only to be told again and again that the food were on its way. And to our utmost frustration, we even saw other tables who sat down way after us getting served their food before us.

I bumped into a co-worker Weng Lee and her family there and this, too, was their first time patronising Hock Lye - believe me, her face was just as black as ours due to the extreme long wait as she had a baby girl to be fed still.

The staff even got into trouble with the folks from a table behind us when they questioned them what was taking them so long to get all orders served and why was there a duplicate dish being served - obviously the situation had gotten out of control.

After what seemed like ages later (more than 1.5 hours to be exact), our mediocre 3 dishes finally came - and we were not even provided rice or cutleries even after the dishes came! *eyes rolled to the max*

We had...

Mantis prawns (meat) - 'Kong Pou' style (RM 10)


This was just so-so.... (maybe because we were very upset over the wait time and also highly starved by then)


'Kappa' (RM 10)


This was done 'ba jiao' style (not sure what it meant) but it's a bit sweet, savoury and sourish - not a bad combination for the appetizing effect (yeah, our appetitie had already run thin by then)

Baked crabs (1 x meat crab - RM 22.50; 1 x egg crab - RM 11.20)


The crabs were very fresh and meaty no doubt, but I still preferred the ones from Gee Seng

When we were almost done with our food - one of the lady staff came and tried to console us - 'taukeh, really sorry ya for taking so long - the kitchen prepares the food based on the order sequence... we didn't expect it to get out of control.. too many people turned up tonight; we're not going to accept any walk-ins for tomorrow night already as we definitely cannot make it as we are pretty much booked for tomorrow night...' (well that sort of eased our 'fire' a bit but nevertheless it did not change our mindset of not coming back in future)

The bill came up to RM 58 (including drinks) - to us, that's freakin' expensive considering the ridiculous wait time, poor service and mediocre food quality. A good RM 64 got us 5 dishes plus a dessert at Gee Seng.

KW specifically asked me to highlight and emphasize in my blog that their system is too poor - orders were taking far too long - they should learn some system from Tambun as it only takes a blink of an eye to get all orders ready and served after the orders were being taken

If you still have interest to verify what we have reviewed thus far, feel free to pay them a visit, their location map as below (from their brochure and business card):-