'Bigger than my girlfriend': 100kg grouper caught off Indonesia stuns supermarket shoppers in Ang Mo Kio

SINGAPORE – The blade of the knife came off the handle as meat specialist Mike Foo was filleting a 100kg giant grouper in front of a crowd of eager shoppers at FairPrice Xtra AMK Hub on June 17.

“It was very difficult to do the filleting because the fish was huge, the meat was very thick and the bones were very hard,” said Mr Foo, 50.

“This is the first time in my 24 years of working with seafood that I’ve seen such a big fish, so I was very surprised.”

FairPrice said that this was the first time it had a grouper of this size filleted for sale to its consumers.

“We required four people to carry the fish, and we didn’t expect the length of the fish to be about 178cm,” said Mr Bryan Tan, department manager of FairPrice Xtra AMK Hub.

The fish was caught off Indonesia on June 12, and transported to Singapore by ship.

Mr Foo said that when the fish arrived at the supermarket on June 16, he had to carefully plan how to slice the fish.

It took an hour on Monday to fillet the fish fully in front of a crowd of shoppers, many taking pictures with their mobile phones.

“I was excited to see the fish, and this is the first time in my life I’ve seen a huge fish like this,” said Madam Tracy Mui, 72, who posed for a picture with the giant fish, which was longer than her arm span.

“The fish is bigger than my girlfriend,” exclaimed Mr George Xu, 33, who was on a grocery run with his girlfriend, Ms Liz Liao, 28.

Ms Liao said the fish “looks super fresh”, and they plan to cook tom yum soup with the portion they got.

The last time FairPrice organised a filleting session with an audience of shoppers was on May 1, when a 51kg giant grouper was carved up at FairPrice Xtra AMK Hub.

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This article was first published in The Straits Times. Permission required for reproduction.