King's Laksa Steamboat

The husband normally doesn't like steamboat, and I normally don't like those steamboat buffets that serve a lot of bad food for low prices. So it had to take a Groupon voucher to get us to discover this little shop along Teck Chye Terrace, just off Lim Tua Tow Road - again, another major traffic problem hotspot. The first time, we were there on a Saturday night with the extended family, and it was crazy but we really enjoyed the laksa soup base. So the husband and I waited for a late weekday night dinner and this was the scene at 9.30pm.

They have a limited range of sauces compared to some other places, but it's enough for us.

We ordered a laksa soup base and a herbal soup base. Basically it's an a la carte buffet where you can also order cooked food like fried chicken wings. But I'm not a huge fan of precooked food at steamboat buffets.

Dipping sauces all good and ready to go

They had jellyfish on the menu, which I normally like. But I didn't enjoy the sauce they used.
We ordered a variety of things including beancurd, tau kee, pork balls, sweet potato noodles and other yong tau fu thingys.
The tau kee was fabulous with the laksa stock

We also had veggies and golden mushrooms, and beef and pork.

The price for an adult at dinner time is $20.80, and while this doesn't include seafood (you need to pay more for that), it's good enough for us.

King's Laksa Steamboat
17 Teck Chye Terrace Singapore 545724
Tel: 62878010

Steamboat in China - Version 2

A few days after the roundtable steamboat, we were also taken out to dinner in Tianjin by our Chinese partners for the longest steamboat session (in terms of the length of the table, not the duration of the meal) ever.

My little corner, where a colleague and I shared a portion.

Garnishing, dips, and the ever-amazing chilli oil.

Veggies - not quite so pretty as the previous session's, but still good. I love the dehydrated tofu - it's really good when it soaks up the hot stock.

Mixture of beef and lamb. The beef was no less worthy.

Garlic to put into the soup.

The looooong table. Being seated at the edge means that I was one of the least important people at the dinner.

My fave sesame sauce, chilli oil and coriander dip.

Midway through, the waitresses came to dish out weird looking sliced bits that looked like they had originated from the deep insides of various animals and had never seen the light of day until their host organism had been electrocuted to death. Subsequently, I was told that it was slices of some large shellfish and that I was missing out big time if I didn't try it. So I did.

And it was so wonderful, I asked for a second serve. Till this day, I have no idea whether it really was shellfish, and frankly I'd rather not know.

The main dish, or 主食. I finally realised why the Chinese serve the carbs at the end...so that in case you're not full on the good stuff (ie. meats and seafood), the cheaper and more inferior stuff will fill you up at the end. In Tianjin, they prefer noodles and dumplings to rice.

Then a steaming hot pot of braised pork in soya sauce came along as well. Excellent in the freezing cold weather.

Steamboat in China - Version 1

I went to Tianjin from Shanghai, and it was around minus 5 deg C in early Feb. I am of the opinion that there's nothing better to eat in extreme cold weather than steamboat!

What one serving looked like:

Garnishes

Close up: We had many people in our team who were cheering to see the coagulated pig's blood. Apparently AVA doesn't permit it to be sold in Singapore anymore since it's apparently unsafe.

We also had prawns....

Veggies - made the soup stock even sweeter.

The dumplings were GOOD.

Sesame sauce with spring onions and coriander...divine.

Even better - chilli oil.

I like steamboat in China because they always give you your own pot, which means you don't need to reach halfway across a table to search for your missing food item. And you can drink the soup straight out of it.

My pot.

The entire spread. It was a lovely night.

Ding Ding Xiang, Beijing

The past few weeks have been crazy, work-wise. I had to be to China for all the working days in between Christmas and New Year, Which meant working the weekend before (over Christmas) and after (over New Year). I ended up having a free night to myself to look for a place to eat in Beijing, and really wanted something yummy to make myself feel better about all the work I had to do. If I had been with someone else, I would have headed to Da Dong to tackle a (half) roast duck, but it would have almost impossible to finish on my own, plus I would have been tempted to order all the other yummy things.

I would normally have gone to the Place if I was with colleagues, but decided (in freezing temperatures of minus 10 dec C) to walk on by to Soho Shangdu next door to Ding Ding Xiang, which is a steamboat chain with shops all over Beijing. The last time I ate at Ding Ding Xiang was in late-Sept 2008 in Tianjin after a majorly stressful event. We had a vegetarian with us then, so I was most impressed that each person gets their own hotpot, with a range of soup bases to choose from.

The Beijing outlet was a more posh one than the Tianjin branch. It was fairly quiet, since it was about 9pm.
Hotpot must-haves 1: sesame sauce, spring onions and coriander leaves.

Hotpot must-haves 2: Beer - either Yanjing or Qingdao

A pretty good mix of carbohydates, fibre and protein. I picked a pork soup base, which was rich and sweet. It was heavenly : )

Locations all around Beijing and Tianjin. For more info, you can refer to their website at: http://www.dingdingxiang.com.cn/, which is not entirely reliable. However, they have branches at Soho Shangdu (along Guanghua Road in Chaoyang, near Shimao's The Place, and also on the 6th fllor of Shin Kong Place, Chaoyang District, No. 87 Jianguo Road (Jian Guo Lu), within walking distance from Dawanglu Subway station along the No. 1 Line.

Chuan Jiang Hao Zi Steamboat Restaurant (川江号子火锅楼）- Cheated BIG TIME

Yesterday evening a friend and I decided to have hotpot, so we went to one of the ubiquitous PRC-run steamboat places in Chinatown. We went into the first one we saw, which was Chuan Jiang Hao Zi Steamboat Restaurant (川江号子火锅楼） at No. 12 Smith St.

We were hard-sold by the PRC lady boss into ordering the buffet, but we stood firm since we were not keen to overeat. We ordered 5 dishes from the a la carte menu: beef fillet, chicken fillet, lotus root, golden mushroom and Chinese cabbage. This was what we got: (guess how much it cost us eventually?) Notice that there were only 3 slices of lotus root! We had a bit of a shock because the menu said $3.00, which meant that it was $1 per slice. The amount of golden mushroom was pathetic given that the menu said $3.00.


Check out the menu below, with relevant items circled in red:

The meats were probably of a more decent serving. Beef supposedly cost $4.90 and chicken $4.00.
Imagine our shock when the bill came totalling more than $40. We were told (rather agressively too) by the lady boss that while she was persuading us to have the buffet, that the prices on the menu had gone up and that it was a 5 year old menu and that we had disregarded her good advice to have the buffet. So the beef was $.690, the chicken $6.00, and the golden mushrooms and lotus root $4.00 each! (that makes it $1.33 per slice).

Her word against ours, but after 2 years of working on a project in China, I am quite sure that I would have understood that. My friend, who speaks Mandarin at home, had a go as well, but we realised rather quickly that it was pointless to argue. So we paid and left quickly.

After getting home, I realised we had been charged for a dish we didn't order, ie there was an extra 2x2.00 charge. 40 bucks for that silly plate of veggies and meat (ok, including 2 soft drinks) was ridiculous.

And to make things worse, we realised they recycle their soup base! We didn't order any prawns....so why was there a prawn leg in the soup????

Please eat at your own risk at 12 Smith Street!

Dong Lai Shun

Dong Lai Shun is a Muslim hotpot (or some say steamboat) place in Beijing. I had always thought that they only had one branch at Wangfujing, but was pleasantly surprised to come across it in Xizhimen, where I was staying. The Wangfujing branch has set meals, which give you a bit of everything. At the Xizhimen branch, everything had to be ordered separately which was a bit of a pain since the servings weren't exactly small.

Even the hot pots could be ordered separately! The prettier ones were more expensive.

The ugliest hotpot was the cheapest.
They also serve proper dishes here.

But I was there for the meat...

Eventually settled on one serve of beef, spinach, golden mushroom and bee hoon. And beer is a must-have with hotpot - Yanjing dunsheng beer is really good.

The dipping sauce had to be ordered separately (again, another deviation from the Wangfujing branch). The coriander leaves and spring onions went well with the sesame sauce....

As did the chilli oil.

I also had a serve of lotus root....it was a good meal, but difficult to eat alone. Total price around RMB 130.

M Hotel Buffets

I was at the M Hotel 2 weeks in a row for buffets...the first was for lunch (courtesy of my big boss), and the second was for dinner (courtesy of my uni mates). They have a buffet restaurant on the second floor, where the entire place just revolves around the buffet. The lunch buffet is $36 per adult, which the steamboat dinner buffet costs $40 per adult.

First, the lunch buffet. They had cooked seafood - clams, prawns and mussels.

Sashimi and sushi

The salad bar

Sarawak laksa

Roast meats - duck, pork and char siew

tempura soft-shell crab

breads to go with curry

the salad bar again

the dessert consisted mostly small bites of kueh and cakes

jellies

I didn't see the fruits and durian pengat till later, by which time I was happily eating with my colleagues and had put my camera away. I ate 3 bowls of durian : )

The next visit a week later, I went for the steamboat dinner buffet. The entire place was packed solid on a Wed night.

The meats - beef, chicken, pork, lamb and other various innards
The carbs: noodles of various styles

various mushrooms and tofus

seafood - they even had promfrets

yong tau fu station

Dips and chinese herbs. I was most pleased with the herbs!

The veggies - a pretty good variety

more carbs...I didn't try them though

The dips were really good. They had suki sauce, sesame sauce, sesame oil, spring onions, garlic, chilli, ginger, soy sauce - you name it, they had it. Just one thing that I was craving that wasn't there...chilli oil. Otherwise it would have been perfect.

The dinner desserts were more interesting than the lunch desserts. They even had green tea panna cotta (which I was too stuffed to try)

Jellies

Drunken prawns. These were really fresh...EXCELLENT! We had numerous servings.

Throwing it all in

The best finale to dinner - durian pengat! (I had 3 bowls again)

I would rate the dinner buffet as being more worth the money and value, since the food was of pretty good quality. I really enjoyed the different soups, and adding in the herbs to my own liking made me happy since I felt was in in control of how herbal I wanted the soup. The lunch buffet wasn't priced as attractively as other buffets which give much more food for a few dollars more.

I'm keen to go back for the steamboat. Any takers?

M Hotel

The Buffet at the 2nd Floor

81 Anson Road

Tel: 6500 6116