Taiwanese Hotpot Lunch @ Beauty in the Pot
It’s the first day of Chinese New Year today! Happy Year of the Rooster!
On the eve of Chinese New Year, it is a tradition for the family to get together for a reunion dinner. These reunion dinners can be big affairs among extended family members or small family dinners depending on each family. The most common is a dinner involving 3 generations. Hotpot meals are popular choices for the reunion dinner meal in Singapore. It is always fun for the family to gather around a hotpot to celebrate this biggest Chinese festival of the year. So it seems apt that I should share our recent hot pot experience in my post today. In recent years, many Sze Chuan style spicy hot pot restaurants have sprouted out all over the island and our family enjoy going for such a meal once in a while.
When we went to Taiwan in Dec 2015, we enjoyed their hot pots. One of our favorite was Elixir Health Pot 无老锅, a hot pot restaurant chain in Taiwan famed for their “beauty soup” base. This chain of restaurant has excellent service and good food and is always full despite its many outlets.
When my friend told me some time ago about a new hot pot restaurant, Beauty in the Pot, in Singapore that is inspired by Elixir Health Pot, I thought we must try it. But every time we call for a reservation, the restaurant is always full. My friend commented that he needed to make his reservations at least 2 weeks in advance to get a table. Wow! Unbelievable for a restaurant in Singapore! Finally I decided to just put in a waitlist reservation online for 2 Jan 2016, and surprise surprise, the restaurant contacted me to confirm a table. So off we went at the start of the new year to check out this popular hotpot restaurant at One KM mall in Tanjong Katong, its original outlet. They recently opened a second outlet at Centrepoint in Orchard Road. We have to see if it is anywhere as good as its inspiration in Taiwan.
They have 2 soup base choices to choose from. A collagen rich “beauty soup” and a spicy herbal soup. You can choose either one for SGD20 or pay SGD25 for both. We went for the double soup base as DH and I like a spicy soup base while the kids can’t take too spicy stuff and of course also because non-spicy soup base here is its speciality. For the spicy soup, one canchoose from 3 levels of spiciness. We went for the lowest and are happy with it. It is always good to go for the lowest and add spiciness to the soup if it is not spicy enough. I must say that they spicy soup here is very good and not very oily unlike the spicy soup base at the popular Chinese Hot Pot restaurant Haidilao. I find it also more flavorful instead of just being spicy and numbing like common Szechuan spicy soup.
There is a sauce station here for you to make your own dipping sauce. For those not sure how to get started, they have sample recipes to suggest the various sauces that you can make. I make mine with a sesame sauce base with Sha Cha sauce, a little vinegar, a little soy sauce and garnished with sesame seeds, chili, garlic and spring onion.
We are beef lovers and ordered the angus prime rib and the regular beef. We also had the kurobuta pork, luncheon meat and beef tripe.
We especially like the seafood balls and seafood paste. We had the prawn paste, scallop fish paste and cattle fish paste. Our favorite is the ebiko prawn paste which is really prawn paste with ikura (fish roe). The ikura add an interesting crunch to the paste. Yum!
We also order the potato thick vermicelli which we like with with hotspots, and several types of tofus. The best tofu is fish tofu. Made into the shape of a fish, it is a togu mixed with fish paste. Very tasty. It comes in 2 pieces per serving. We ordered 3 servings initially and then added a fourth serving.
Dessert is complimentary shaved ice just like at Elixir Health Pot in Taiwan. Here, the shaved ice is yuzu flavored and very refreshing. At Elixir Health Pot, their shaved ice is passion fruit flavoured.
How does this compare to Elixir Health Pot in Taiwan? A copycat, but not a bad one, I must say. Elixir Health Pot is known for its good service. The service staff give a bow after serving the food each time. They do the same here, or I should say, do their best to try to do the same here. But some how seems a bit unnatural and uncomfortable with it. But we don’t really care for that. We were generally happy with the meal and went away, full and satisfied. For the 5 of this, this meal came up to SGD302.