Ever since we had the chicken rice lunch downstairs, we kept saying that we would want to go and try their hotpot place on the 1st Floor…
…but we never got down to doing it until that day, the day of the Mid-Autumn/Mooncake Festival.
We went early, before 6.00 p.m., in the hope that there would not be a crowd and we would be able to get a table as we did bother to make a reservation. I was thinking that since there are so many hotpot places in town sprouting out here, there and everywhere like mushrooms after the rain, if the place was too crowded, we could always try another one.
Luckily, there were tables available and believe it or not, there were others there already before us. If I am not wrong, the place was full by the time we were leaving – I don’t know whether that was because of the festival or they actually do enjoy brisk business like this every night.
My missus helped herself to three types of chili dip…
…which I did try but none was to my liking. None of them came near to what my missus makes herself at home.
For the hotpot, we picked the classic pork bone soup on one side and the tom yam on the other (RM15.00 for a pick of 2)…
…and for the meat, we had pork (RM10.00) and beef (RM12.00)…
…and premium lamb slices (RM20.00)…
My girl said that she could not tell the difference between the beef and the lamb and both did not stand out in any way so in future, we might as well just order the pork which we felt was the nicest of the three.
The so-called “fresh prawns” were expensive, RM28.00 for a set of 4…
…and I asked for two sets because I was expecting to get freshwater prawns (udang galah). To be frank, I felt these were way overpriced – I can easily get them at the shop near my house, roundabout 20 of them, this size or bigger, for around RM40 (usually RM45.00 a kilo). Had I known better, I would have given them a miss.
The Spanish mackerel fishballs (RM8.00)…
…were great and so were the shrimp and pork dumplings (RM8.00)…
I should have asked for two sets each of these two instead of the prawns.
The fresh red squid (RM12.00)…
…wasn’t all that cheap either, nothing to get excited about and something we would surely leave out, should we happen to come back here again next time.
The Hakka yong tao foo (RM15.00)…
…was all right and my girl loved their fresh tofu (RM4.00)…
– she said it was extra smooth and silky, nicer than the ones sold at the wet market in town. You may have noticed how they seem to qualify most items on their menu as being “fresh“, even the tofu. LOL!!!
The mushroom platter (RM8.00)…
…took quite a long time coming and that got me wondering why. I thought it would not need much preparation, just dump everything in a plate and serve…and we also had these Q-Q (curly) vegetables (RM5.00) and tang hoon/glass noodles (RM4.00)…
…too.
We just threw everything in, equally divided between the two types of broth and when it started boiling…
…it was time to dig in!
The tom yam soup was nice but way too spicy and too sour for me to handle – I guess the rest did not fancy it much either as by the time we had finished everything, there was still half left. The classic pork bone soup was really good, so “sweet” and bursting with flavours, so much so that it prompted my girl to remark, next time we shall just have the pork bone soup on both sides.
The total came up to RM183.00 (inclusive of drinks) for the four of us – we invited my sister to join us that night. That sure wasn’t cheap and we could have had our own at home for much less but at least, we did not have to do all the preparation and all the washing and cleaning once we were done. We certainly wouldn’t mind coming here again but I guess we shall just reserve it for special occasions.
HOTPOT CAFÉ is on the 1st Floor, right above TING KEE CHICKEN RICE (2.292362, 111.825681) which is located at No. 85, Jalan Kampung Nyabor, to the extreme left of the block of shops directly across the road from RH Hotel.
...STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS! 