One of the best hotpots I ever got to have late of last year was this one here at Shabu Sai.
They have a few outlets across the island, mind, but the one we tend to go to is the one at Somerset.
It's quieter, that location, and one gets to chill out at Orchard afterwards.
What's funny is that I had not expected to be falling in love with it so much, but, yes, I did, and now, I get excited whenever my friend and I drop in for their hotpots whatever time of the day.
The best thing about their hotpot here at Shabu Sai is how fresh their ingredients are.
Whether it be the meats or the vegetables, whether it be the Japanese curry or the steamed rice or the sauces, everything is prepared, and kept in the chilliest, freshest way where the food be neatly arranged and the portions sufficient.
The chilled vegetables always get to me.
It is not because I don't get to have chilled vegetables elsewhere.
It is that them chilled vegetables here are always of good portion, cold, nearly iced, and refreshing to both the senses and the eye. There is a marked difference, I tell you, at the sight of a crisp, fresh raw vegetable versus a limp, hastily arranged one.
There're plenty of vegetables here to be had at Shabu Sai.
They're one of the most popular ingredients for the pot.
Not only do they have the green leafy ones, there're also a variety of mushrooms, fresh sliced tomatoes, carrots, radishes, seaweed, potatoes (maybe) and some others which all of a sudden now I cannot remember.
My friend is fan of the seaweed and spinach.
There be nothing else he take save for these two vegetables.
Me, on the other hand, I usually go for the Romaine lettuce- that's the first thing I look for when I go to the vegetable counter- but if there be none, I go for the Chinese cabbage or the spinach leaves that they definitely have there. Maybe one day I ought to take the other kinds of vegetables but they tend to have large stems and I'm not so big a fan of them.
In recent times, I've started to take the tomatoes and the mushrooms too.
My vegetables this afternoon were the Chinese cabbage, fresh tomatoes, spinach and a couple of chopped shiitake mushrooms.
I like alternating vegetables with meat, so all through my meal I was kept busy dunking leaf after leaf into my soup in between them slices of meat.
My choice of soup today was Yuzu-something. Offhand I can't quite remember what it was, but I know it wasn't tonkotsu, it wasn't tomato or anything spicy, and neither was it the clean-tasting seaweed soup base that my friend ordered.
First thing that went into the soup were the mushrooms, the vegetables, and the cheese tofus.
Mushrooms take some time to boil, cheese tofus take some time to soak in all the soup, and I wanted to see the vegetables cook before the meat arrived.
As it happened, today, like always, all through the meal I alternated between dunking them leaves into the soup and the slices of beef that my friend had taken the liberty to order.
Don't laugh, it actually makes for a very good combination on the palate.
The meat, clean-tasting as it is without any marination, makes for a very easy chew. It isn't dry if you eat it as soon as it's out of the pot. What I do is to place the vegetables- by now all soaked up with the soup- on top of the meat, and so keeps it warm.
The mouth never quite stops moving when it comes to the hotpot here at Shabu Sai.
Maybe we've gotten very practiced.
On the table there is a homemade dip of Greek-style yogurt and garlic powder, as well as a bit of sour cream, so them both make for an excellent dip that has all the the necessary fermentation yet does not overwhelm nor get too oily on the tongue.
My friend likes his beef with the yogurt and garlic.
Me, I like mine with the sour cream.
Not that I don't like yogurt, but sour cream gives off that distinctive texture that is smooth but not that watery and is surprisingly less sour than yogurt when eaten together with meat.
All in all, I like how the probiotics work.
They make for wonderful digestion especially when you're aiming to go through 6 trays of meat.
Today, between the both of us, I think we had at least 7, if not 8 trays altogether.
Midway I decided it kind of dumb to not have their sauces, so off it was to the counter I went, getting myself a bowl of sesame sauce mixed with sesame oil, plus a heap of spring onions and coriander. I think I added some fried onions too.
Maybe it's not so good on its own but coriander, with its hint of bitter, actually does add that leafy grassy texture to the meat and takes away some of the salty salty taste from the sesame sauce.
This sauce made for a wonderful addition to the sour cream that I was already happily dipping my meat into, and I got to stir some of it inside my bowl of udon as well.
Special mention must be made of this udon.
See, most of the time when I'm here I like to get myself a bowl of rice whenever I come here. Shabu Sai has rice in the pot for the taking, so what I like to do is to get myself a bowl, drown the grains in ladles of sesame oil, drop lots and lots of fried onions on top, and eat.
But today I was looking at the ramen and the udon at the counter in front of me and I started wondering just why it was I had never made myself a bowl prior.
So I got a couple strands of udon and threw them inside the pot.
When they were ready, I had them with a few slices of beef, several pieces of lettuce, and a slice of fresh tomato that was still on the serving plate.
The noodles, slow-cooked with the warmth of the hotpot, tasted especially good.
I'll definitely be having them again the next time I come for sure.
Likewise I'll also be having my vanilla soft serve with salt (for fun) and a scattering of sesame seeds (for crunch). Yes, one is supposed to have it with rainbow sprinkles or even cornflakes and a drizzle of chocolate sauce, but I think salt adds that wee bit of difference, and who is to say that sesame seeds can't go with vanilla soft serve anyway?
There was dessert too where we had vanilla ice cream, and where I added a pinch of salt, just for the fun of it, if nothing more.