A customer complains that there is hair in his food and refuses to pay. On its own, that sounds like an unpleasant but fairly ordinary restaurant dispute.
What happened at a restaurant along Persiaran Gurney in George Town, Penang, on October 4, 2026, was stranger. Local reports place the incident in the 5 p.m. hour. A man described in local media as a foreign national complained that he had found hair in his char kway teow and left with a woman accompanying him without paying a bill of about RM30.
But the detail that bothered the restaurant manager was not simply that there was hair in the food. The hairs appeared to be dry.