The past one week, social media and local foodies have been abuzz with one of the greatest moments in Malaysian food history — the opening of Gordon Ramsay’s Bar & Grill Restaurant at Sunway Resort, the flagship hotel at Sunway City, Kuala Lumpur! This is indeed good news as Malaysia, despite it being dubbed as a food haven, has not been getting much recognition globally.
The opening of the multi-Michelin starred celebrity chef’s signature restaurant, garnered headlines both locally and internationally however, there seems to be a minor factual slip-up lately. This involves the price of the renovation. Most media outlets have reported the price of the restaurant’s renovation to be US$60mil. A rough estimate reveals that the price is RM249mil in the local currency.
However, this is factually incorrect as RM249mil involves the renovation of the entire property. In other words, this is the renovation cost for the hotel itself! The cost of renovation for Gordon Ramsay’s Bar & Grill Restuarant, however, would be lesser than that.
This minor slip-up was observed across various publications, causing a frenzy of likes, shares and comments on social media, mainly by people who are in awe of the renovation cost. However, factually speaking, the cost propagated by the publications, albeit an error, is actually quite absurd. Even Ramsay’s steakhouse’s renovation in Las Vegas costs US$1.26mil! With US$60mil (RM249mil), one could afford to renovate 46 more restaurants.
Here are snippets of the articles which stated the error in question:
One of them, has later, apologised for their mistake via their website while the remaining two publications have changed their headlines and content.
With the ongoing pandemic, netizens would definitely be in need of news that does not confuse them any further with the inclusion of multiple errors. Netizens should also take one step further by reading news regarding a particular topic from multiple sources. This would enable them to analyse, evaluate and react accordingly.
