All you can eat Hotpot

Australians like to call steamboat as hotpot. Once, I told my boss my plans for steamboat with friends during the weekend, he looked very confused. He replied with something about being on the Yarra (a river that runs through Melbourne city) etc. I quickly clarified that steamboat is a food related activity, so he does not continue to think about the method of transportation whenever I mentioned steamboat.

Tonight, my friends and I went for an all you can eat hotpot/steamboat dinner in the city for $23 per person. We were given a slip of paper and when we've marked the number of dishes we wanted to order, they sent the dishes to our table. This establishment being a mainland chinese place, the dishes and soup base were quite different to my tastes. We ordered the yin yang hotpot, which was a fancy name for one side of spicy soup and the other side of traditional clear soup. The clear soup had 'yong sam so' ginseng, unpeeled longans, and some other unidentified herbs. It was tasty and flavoursome though laden with msg. I became quite thirsty midway through the meal. The chilli side of the soup contained a layer of chilli oil on top of the soup, black beans and more herbs. I didn't really venture to that side of the pot so I couldn't describe accurately its contents.

We ordered dishes such as sliced lamb and beef (mainland Chinese does not prefer chicken in their steamboats), prawn, straw mushrooms (both of which can only be ordered once), vegetables, fish noodles, fresh tofu, calamari (no fish fillets), green mussels, crab sticks, black fungus and assorted fish, cuttlefish, prawn balls. I kept waiting for the clear soup to boil but somehow the chilli soup beat the clear soup to the boil most times because the thick layer of oil on top retained heat better.

We also ordered small cooked dishes such as braised peanuts, pigs ears (quite crunchy and tasty), shredded seaweed, chicken feet and chicken gizzard. The restaurant also has quite a good array of desserts. We ordered taro pancake, tong yuen (peanut and sesame), red bean 'tzim tui' to share. Overall, I enjoyed the time that we had together, especially since it's been a while since I last saw these friends and the food was good too.