Sparklette Magazine » steamboat

Parklane Deli House – Not That Delicious

Veron Ang — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 09:41:35 +0000

The area behind Bugis Junction that spans Tan Quee Lan Street and Liang Seah Street is synonymous for being concentrated with steamboat restaurants. I use the term “restaurant” loosely here as these are just tiny eateries tucked into shophouse buildings. They tend to be cramped and accommodate no more than twenty tables each.

One of these steamboat eateries caters the famed porridge steamboat buffet which I have heard so much about. Instead of a soup base used in traditional steamboats, Parklane Deli House offers a deviation that uses porridge for a change. And apparently it’s really good! So being curious, we decided to try out this unique steamboat for ourselves.

Steamboat with Porridge Base
S$14.80
Rating:

Right from the start you would notice that the pot used is not the usual metallic type. It is some kind of heavy clay pot. The waitress informs us to stir the porridge often to avoid burning it. She then helpfully offers that we could add salted egg, carrot, tapioca, etc ingredients to the porridge to make it more savoury. These tips are also printed on the posters displayed on the walls.

Okay, now for the million dollar question: Was the porridge any good?

Put aside the fact that they call it a “steamboat” for a sec. It tasted like any regular ol’ plain porridge that my Mom cooks. Simply put, the porridge steamboat is just a marketing gimmick. What we got was nothing more than a very big pot of plain porridge. Except that we continuously cooked and stirred it until it became more liquid than it already was.

Oh yeah we add food to it too. It is after all a steamboat buffet. Check out the options they had.

Steamboat Buffet
Rating:

For crying out loud, all they had were vegetables, some eggs, and things made from flour! We barely touched any of those. Luckily there were some prawns and chicken meat and fish slices but these had to be ordered using a slip of paper. Bad news if you happen to be there on a busy night. The food you order hardly ever comes. We had to complain several times before we were finally served the decent food after about half an hour. Meanwhile we had to contend with just eating, or rather drinking plain porridge.

Having said that, I did like concocting my own dips from the various condiments. My favourite combination was having sambal chilli as a base, drench it with sesame oil, add a touch of chopped garlic and finally sprinkle some of that green spring onions commonly found in Chinese soup. This DIY dip trend seems to be catching on with many steamboat restaurants these days.

To sum it up, I thoroughly disliked my experience at Parklane Deli House. The food options were severely limited. Service was slow. What I thought would be an innovation turned out to be nothing more than a marketing gimmick.

Parklane Deli House
12 Liang Seah Street
Singapore 189033
Tel: +65 6339 6589

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The Mushroom Pot – Mush Room for Improvement

Veron Ang — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 07:08:10 +0000

I have been contemplating whether to spend any time blogging on The Mushroom Pot. My dining experience at this restaurant was so excruciatingly bad I didn’t really want to remember it, much less write about it. But then I decided — because it was so bad, all the more I have to warn my readers about this place! So here goes.

We were at the Singapore Indoor Stadium for the Coldplay concert. With time to kill before the concert started, we decided to have dinner at The Mushroom Pot. When it comes to dining at the stadium there isn’t much of a choice. Among the few restaurants there we thought The Mushroom Pot looked the most interesting.

Little did we know that we were in for a great disappointment. I have only harsh words for this place.

Drunken Chicken (醉鸡）
S$8++
Rating:

Take a dish like the drunken chicken. As its name suggests it is supposed to be chicken marinated in wine or some form of liquor. What was served was simply regular chicken with absolutely no hint of any liquor flavour. The chicken looked no different from what you get at hawker centre stalls! I don’t know what’s worse — the huge chunks of bone and fat that came with the chicken, or the absence of any liquor that it’s supposed to be drenched in. It was a complete sham!

Wild Mushroom Tom Yum Soup （野生菌泰式酸辣汤）
S$8++
Rating:

For a restaurant that specialises in mushroom dishes, their mushroom soup is certainly nothing to shout about. The wild mushroom tom yum soup was served with some thin slices of mushroom in the mix. The soup itself was thin, and way too spicy and sour. It left a bad impression immediately.

The not-so-drunken chicken and over-the-top-sour tom yum soup were just the appetisers. Our main course of crispy squid with wasabi sauce was not served until at least half an hour after we were done with our appetisers! The long service time was disgraceful. To add to the damage they served us the wrong dish a couple of times. By the time they finally got it right, we were almost late for coldplay!

Crispy Squid with Wasabi Sauce （芥末花枝）
S$12++
Rating:

The only good word I can put in for this horrible restaurant is that I actually liked the crispy squid. The pieces of calamari were coated with a light, tasty batter deep-fried to a crisp. The accompanying wasabi sauce provided a fun twist and gave much zest to the dish. Unfortunately we simply didn’t have much time to savour the calamari.

Even when it came to payment, the people handling the cash register didn’t seem too familiar with it. Here we were, already ten minutes past 8 and late for the concert. I don’t know how difficult it is to work the machine but somehow the cashier had to take at least five minutes to process each payment.

There were many angry faces in the queue as virtually everyone was there for Coldplay. We were all late because of the slow service! Why on earth were there so few waitstaff on a night like this? With a huge act like Coldplay performing that night (something the restaurant would have known a couple of months in advance), they should have been fully prepared to handle the large influx of customers.

I was not surprised when I saw several lines of additional charges in my receipt. $1.50 for the house appetiser that we didn’t get. $0.60 for the serviettes. $3 for the hot Chinese tea. And $2 for the plain white rice. Another 10 percent for the absolutely lousy non-service. I’m never ever setting my foot in that place again.

The Mushroom Pot
Website

Stadium outlet

Singapore Indoor Stadium
Singapore Indoor Stadium
2 Stadium Walk #01-02
Singapore 397691
Tel: +65 6342 3320
Service:

Orchard Point outlet

Orchard Point
OG level 4
160 Orchard Road
Singapore 238842
Tel: +6733 9910

News updates

February 3, 2007: My list of Best (& Worst) Restaurants in Singapore for 2006
- Winner of “Worst Restaurant of the Year”

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Steamboat Fiesta

Veron Ang — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 15:54:19 +0000

Wow I already had three steamboat dinners over the past ten days! You know how steamboat dinners tend to be. People always stuff themselves with more food than their body can take, and that’s exactly what happened during each and every one of those dinners.

The first was a reunion dinner at home on Chinese New Year eve, which I had already blogged about. The second was on Saturday at Tian Tian Huo Guo (Happy Pay Steamboat) along Tan Quee Lan Street, behind Bugis Junction.

As with almost all steamboat places, we could have unlimited food servings including tiger prawns. The corn ribs soup and snakehead fish soup in particular were pretty good. Stay away from the mala soup though. It’s too spicy and oily and didn’t taste nice at all; it’s basically just chilli oil. Not too sure how much it cost per person because it was my brother who footed the bill.

Update: I got the receipt from my bro and found that the total bill came up to an exorbitant $170 for six of us! They charged $19.80 per person, and $10 per steamboat of soup. We had three steamboats altogether so that works out to $30 for soup alone! To charge for soup is utterly ridiculous! They charged 10% service charge, and yet also charged for the towels we used. Total suckers! And they have the nerve to call themselves the “Happy Pay Steamboat Restaurant”. Please boycott this place everyone. I know I’m gonna.

For today, it was steamboat at Chuan Yi Pin restaurant, beside the new funky shopping complex, icon, also behind Bugis Junction. It cost $15++ per person and didn’t have a wide offering of food. They did offer unlimited servings of prawns though. I think I ate over fifty prawns within the last ten days. Anyway, what I like about the place is that they allow diners to concoct their own sauces.

Diners could concoct sauces from a wide variety of ingredients.

I think the sauces I made were rather good! By the way, if you hate the stench of smelly beancurd the way I do, you may wish to stay away from this particular steamboat restaurant, or choose the most indoor or basement table. The Taiwanese snacks restaurant next door sells smelly beancurd, which has a stench that really cannot be underestimated.

One time I was waiting for the lift at the icon shopping complex at least twenty metres away and smelled an awful stench. It was easily the worst smell that had ever entered my nostrils this lifetime. But of course at that time I didn’t realise it came from the smelly beancurd. I thought the plants nearby had all been newly fertilised, or somebody’s dog had taken a dump. I took the lift up to the top level, no problem. One level down, no problem, and so on. But by the time I got to the third floor, the pungent smell came back at full force! And I thought the dog poo had somehow found its way up the building. Only when I chanced upon the smelly beancurd restaurant later on did I realise that’s what’s causing the stench.

Of course, I’m sure there are many people who love smelly beancurd. But to me it really smells much worse than crap! I could never bring myself to eat it! But I am still really curious as to how anyone could like the dish. If you have something to say about how great smelly beancurd is, please post a comment or send me an email.

News updates

February 3, 2007: My list of Best (& Worst) Restaurants in Singapore for 2006
- Tian Tian Huo Guo (Happy Pay Steamboat) is the runner-up for “Worst Restaurant of the Year”

View the original article and join the discussion at:
http://sparklette.net/food/steamboat/ | 4 comments

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Stadium outlet

Orchard Point outlet

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