I don't usually write reviews of places I've visited but feel I owe it to any 'foreigner' looking for Chinese food in KL in future to communicate my infuriating experience at the Grand Palace. I have not experienced such denial over the quality of food...and lack of care over customer satisfaction ever before in a restaurant.
General summary:
Pros - helpful, hard working staff,
Cons - food quality was mediocre at best, overpriced & incorrectly described food, & obnoxious management.
Read on if you want the detail.
On placing our food order we were enthusiastically advised by the manager the speciality of the house was the suckling 'whole' baby pig and we should try that. I'd had this before elsewhere and didn't take much persuading it would be worth a try. (It later became obvious the reason being was that the manager was keen to offload the remnants of a pig to us, of which all that remained was the skin, and unfortunately for us she was successful in doing so)
The 'suckling pig' came out along with the other dishes and was simply about 70sqcm of roasted skin. No meat whatsoever. Imagine what a reverse engineered pack of Mr Porky XL pack of pork scratchings with any fragment of meat removed would look like, with a baby pig head and four trotters added for asthetic benefit.
It soon became clear that what we had received was indeed once part of a 'whole pig', but it had since had all of its insides removed and presumably sold to someone else.
After each of us sampled the 'skin' we agreed that this wasn't what we'd been told to expect as a 'whole pig', and bearing in mind it cost 220MYR (approx £40) I called over the manager to mention this. (There was a sideline issue of the curry sauce advertised not being applied which I also brought to her attention and I was informed that this was because the chef had made the decision not to add the curry sauce as he knew we were 'foreigners' and didn't think we would be able to handle it - I'm not going to go in to that one as you can draw your own conclusions of the kind of corners cut and excuses made in this place for serving inaccurately advertised food).
Had the issue been addressed professionally by the manager, accepting that this wasn't what had been promised/sold to us at the outset and that the price of the dish would be discounted suitably in the bill at the end then I would definitely NOT be writing such a review. Instead, even after making the manager aware the 'foreigners' actually had a fairly good idea of what a suckling pig was meant to look like, I was met with total denial, with the manager explaining that a pigs skin represented the 'whole' pig exactly as she had described and that the price charged was the price we needed to pay. Absolutely no concessions on the bill would be made.
I explained that based on my multiple previous experiences of suckling pig in both China and some trailblazing outposts of Chinese cuisine in Lancashire the dish normally included skin, meat and ideally a bit of bone, as she had led us to believe in her earlier description of 'whole pig'. I was told I was wrong and that maybe that's what happens in China, but that's not how they do things in the Grand Palace in KL. Even if this was the case, what we had received was certainly not 220MYR worth, it was maybe equivalent to a 30MYR (£5) dish at best. In my book this kind of mistake is forgiveable as I understand mishaps happen in a busy kitchen, so long as it is appropriately recognised and responded to. Alas it was not.
On speaking with the manager as diplomatically as possible at great length and getting nowhere it was clear she had no intention of giving up her advantaged position, having offloaded a plate of skin to a bunch of tourists for a premium price.
I am a big fan of Chinese food but this place fell below expectations on the food quality, and far below on customer service.
We paid up in full, but this place puts profit before customer service at any cost and anyone thinking of parting with their cash at this place should be aware of this experience.
Nb we were not asked at any point by the staff whether the food was to our satisfaction. The Grand Palace didn't seem bothered about that at any point.
Conclusion: you can get much better food in KL for far less money and without any of the aggravation. This place is just a bad example.More