My colleagues and I went to Long Beach at Dempsey on 11 Dec 08 for a dinner. As we had booked about 3 tables, they agreed to give us a special menu for $30 nett, which was a pretty good deal. The ambience of the private rooms and the quality of the chilli crab were pretty good.

However, the troubles started when after the last dish (dessert) had been served, we realised that they had missed out one of the dishes - fried cuttlefish. Rather than wait for them to cook the dish, we thought it would be a relatively simple thing for them to provide a small discount or even a voucher, which would entail them more repeat business.

What was most appalling was the attitude of the managers and the apparent lack of autonomy that they have to make even the simplest decisions.

First, the PR manager asked if we were sure there was indeed cuttlefish in the menu. Hmmm, I don't know how many customers they have encountered who would make up such a story just to get some extra food - even if we were, perhaps we should have gone for something more expensive! So we showed her the email printout which clearly stated the menu and price.

Then, she offered to waive the extra dish of mantou (fried buns) that we had in exchange for the cuttlefish. This left us fairly flabbergasted at how the restaurant was simply attempting to cover up its mistake without any hint of a fair compensation.

After we objected to this, the PR manager called another manager over, who told us that she would have to do something about the nett cost and GST, and would try to give us a 10% discount. So we waited for a while, thinking that the problem had been solved. After 10 min or so, she came back and said that using this method, the total bill was higher than the original bill by a few dollars!

I thought, "Which part of 'you didn't serve me one dish and therefore I should be paying less not more' did you not understand?!"

Needless to say, we objected to actually paying more when we had not been served our full menu! Her only excuse was that she had to close the accounts by that evening (clearly putting herself ahead of the customer's interests), she could not contact her colleague who had negotiated the special menu (although we had the entire email printout) and she had no authority to do anything. She said that she would call us tomorrow when she had spoken to her senior officer.

Finally, we gave up as we had been fruitlessly negotiating this for more than half an hour and the taste of the dinner had turned pretty sour. The lack of service recovery, consideration for the customer and sheer lack of autonomy of the managers make this a really badly run place. I guess if nothing goes wrong, it's a decent place for dinner, but woe betide the customer if anything goes wrong during the night.

I called them in advance to make a dinner reservation for Sunday. They gave me a reminder call on Sunday morning. Pretty good.

I've got frens from overseas and hence I brought them to the typical Singapore place. They had asked for chilli crab and after I read a few reviews here, I chose this over Jumbo in Dempsey. Good choice!

We wanted air conditioning and hence we sat inside. The sitting is cosy as we've gotten the plush cushion booth.

We order 3 crabs to be cooked 3 ways, butter, chilli and black pepper. We then ordered some side dishes, the Sambal Kang Kong, the Seafood Beancurd and the stuffed You Tiao. All good!!! The meal is not complete without the fried man tou.

The meal came out to be about $170 which is reasonable considering that we had 3 crabs and supposedly with the roe.

Service was good as I requested for individual wash bowls and 'shell cracker'. They changed the plates and topped up the drinks often which is a plus. We asked for chilli sauce, sambal chilli etc..

In short, my frens enjoyed themselves.

We had foreign visitors visiting Singapore for the first time, so we just had to bring them to eat black pepper crabs. Considering it was closest to where we were, we decided to bring them to Long Beach Dempsey. We called at 11am that Tuesday morning to reserve a table for six, and lo and behold they only had free tables out on the patio. All indoor tables were taken up, shows how popular they are even on a weekday night! We ended up getting a table on their deck area and although I was initially afraid we were going to get feasted by mosquitos since we were in a darker section, I'm happy to say none of us were feasted upon.

My mum who had been here before said that the sets were worth looking into and she also had a "VIP card" that entitled her to 10% off and it also doubled up as a $10 international calling card (weird, but I'll take it) that she had received the last time she was here. I took a look at the set meal for 5-6 persons and thought the selection wasn't bad so we went for it.

The set consisted of:
1) Bamboo clams with garlic - This was sold out by the time we got there. The manager offered to replace it with sharks fin soup instead. The soup had crab meat in it as well. It was quite a standard sharks fin soup.
2) Scallops cooked either in garlic or Portuguese style - We chose the Portuguese style which was covered in cheese. I thought it was a little heavy in cheese, but the scallop was otherwise succulent.
3) House Prawns - Deep fried and a little like the butter style which had bits of fried fat, I assume. We thought the prawns were not fresh because it was tough and the skin didn't come off easily. The manager told us it was probably because the fire to cook it was too hot and not because the prawns were not fresh... who knows.
4) Black pepper crabs - By far the star of the night. The crabs did not disappoint. They were fresh, very tasty and succulent. Finger licking good. The out of towners were impressed.
5) Fried rice - Disappointing. There were pretty big sized pieces of lard I think. Nothing to shout about. Not much ingredients otherwise
6) Mushroom/Kai lan stirfry - Shiitake, straw mushrooms and kai lan in the usual thick gravy.
7) Dessert - Pulot Hitam with ice cream. Not a bad pairing.

We decided we wanted another vegetable dish so we got persuaded into ordering their special deep fried morning glory with cuttlefish. Each individual leaf was crisp and melted into your mouth. But knowing it's not very healthy didn't give one a good feeling. The cuttlefish was a little fishy but fortunately paired with the hint of the salty sauce on top made it less so. $20 was on the expensive side though...

On the whole dinner was pleasant. The restaurant was indeed hopping with lots of big parties going on. So much for tough economic times! We came here for the crabs and we weren't disappointed. Even though some of the dishes in the set were lacklustre, we thought value was there. With the drinks on top, paying $60 per person for a full meal wasn't bad, helped by the VIP card. Remember to make reservations!

I would just like to share my view on Long Beach Dempsey. I went with my Wife last night because we felt like some Black Pepper Crab and steamed Fish.

The menu stated that a large crab was approx 700-800g (at SGD4/100g) and the X-large was 800g+.

When the waiter came over he asked if we wanted crab and we told him we wanted Black Pepper Crab. We also had an appetizer, Black Pepper beef, garlic baby Kai Lan and asked for whole Hong Kong Steamed Fish. As is often the case in Chinese restaurants, the waiter will make general assumptions as to quantities of food based on the number of people at the table and as we had ordered a number of other dishes I trusted his judgement (each time I go to NoSignboard I normally have the waiter telling me I’ve ordered too much and thus reduces the portions sizes).

Unfortunately my trust was a little naïve. When it came to paying, we found out that he had ordered us an XL crab at 1.2kg (SGD48) and almost the most expensive fish that they kept 650g at SGD9.80/100g (SGD63.70).

With regards to the food, the beef was dripping in oil, the Kai Lan was tasteless however the crab and the fish both tasted very nice however the “devious” tactics to bump up the bill left nothing but a sour taste in our mouths. Luckily it was just the two of us and the damage was limited. If I’d have taken more of my family (like I have often taken them to NoSignboard) then the damage could have been several hundred dollars!

Went to Long Beach @ Demspey very late on Sat night (more like Sun morning!). Have to say that Long Beach gets two gold stars...1 for the late operating hours and 2 for the chilli crab.

For a greedy pig such as myself, when I crave for something I just must have it. So 3 friends and I decided to head to Long Beach after too many drinks on a night out. We needed something to soak up all the alcohol we had and we were craving for some good old chilli crab. No disappointment at all! The Sri Lankan crabs were cooked to perfection and they were fleshy too! It had the right balance of spice and the restaurant were generous with the sauce. Speaking of the sauce, it was so good that we ordered extra plates of mantou just to soak up the sauce.

We had other regular dishes such as the seafood fried rice and broccoli with mushrooms, but the chilli crab stood out for sure! Our money was all spent. I've had chilli crab at other famous restaurants but Long Beach certainly served the best chilli crab I've had in a long while :) :) :) :) :) :) :)