I'm not kidding you when I tell you that this year was really the year of the Mookata.
Because not only did we discover a new place at Zenso in Sunshine Plaza, we tried two other new places when it came to the close of the year.
It was as if we were on some Mookata craze.
Which, by the looks of it, seemed like we were.
I wasn't surprised when my friend told me he wanted to try this Mookata place not too far from Paya Lebar MRT.
It was anyway a Sunday afternoon where we let loose the diet and Mookata be it.
I wish I could tell you the name of the place.
But I was so hungry I only looked for the food and didn't take notice.
I can tell you, however, that it sits in a coffee shop along Geylang East Central, and is adjacent to the more iconic 89.7 coffee shop place on Paya Lebar Road.
Being one of the early diners this late afternoon, we managed to get a table in the alfresco sheltered area of the coffee shop somewhere in the middle a little distance from the road.
This place offers Mookata in the form of sets, and after studying the menu a little bit (if I'm not wrong) we went for the smaller 1-2 pax one.
Mind, it's no small platter, however, and it came with a variety of ingredients delicious enough for both the dome-shaped grill and the moat.
Amongst some of the food on the platter included fish balls, luncheon meat slices, sweet corn, mushrooms, green leafy vegetables, cabbage, Thai fish cake and little crab sticks.
Arranged on the platter in the shape of a frozen, lump-shaped square was a serving of chicken, and of pork.
Next to it was one round cherry tomato (that I ate raw) whilst we waited a bit for the meat to loosen up and defrost.
It didn't take very long, fortunately, and soon enough we were able to have it shabu-shabu style.
But it's not so nice to have the meat without any seasoning or pork fat in the soup, so we chucked the vegetables, the mushrooms and the fish cake inside the moat just so we could have something first.
One of the first meats to go onto the grill was the chicken.
After that came some of the pork.
By that time our single-serve order of drinks had arrived, and can I say I found it rather cute the packaging aka millennial street market style with a straw stuck in between?
By that time our platters holding our ala carte orders had also arrived.
One thing that charmed me very much was just how they'd arranged the food neatly and aesthetically.
And it wasn't just the platters that had the food beautifully laid out.
Their little plates ho of your extra orders came looking very pretty too.
I can't recall exactly what it was that we ordered that day, but I think we had additional servings of pork, marinated pork, tofu cheese, pork belly and beef too.
We had a great time arranging our food here and there all over the grill, especially the crab sticks- which we put to the side, the pork filets- which we put to the middle, the luncheon meats- that we anyhow arranged, the beef and all the belly.
I quite liked the pork belly.
There was just the right amount of fat, the right amount of meat, it was thinly-sliced, easy to chew, and made for a nice, nibbly meal.
Not only that, the meats were relatively fresh too.
Never mind that they were frozen, they tasted wonderful the moment they cooked over the grill.
There was no weird smell.
There was no weird aftertaste.
And the food tasted fresh enough that I didn't even need any sauce.
The only time I dipped my food into the sauce was when I was having the fish balls.
There's very little you can do about the plain, clean taste.
But I didn't use the selections at all- not with the Thai fishcake, not with the green leafy vegetables, not the cabbage and not even with the cheese tofu.