I'll be honest.
We had not intended to come here for this meal.
Perhaps because in recent times we had been going to the K-BBQs and the Thai Mookatas and the hotpots here and there, and what with me being someone who likes to go for the familiar, had not considered this grill-hotpot place.
But then the hotpot upstairs on the 8th floor of Orchard Central, was closed- Dinner and Dance Night- so being hungry enough for two meals, off it was to the next best alternative of this BBQ on the ground floor of Orchard Gateway the mall next door.
It isn't that I hadn't noticed it.
We had passed by the entrance of JIANGHU Buffet a couple of times, seen the diners at their meal inside the same number of times, but had somehow gone past.
Today we stopped and ate.
First thing when we stepped in they got us to a table somewhere in the middle not too far away from the drinks. The wait staff gave us the code, told us what was available, what was not, and let us be.
Whilst my friend decided on the meats, I went around looking at the sauces.
We had brought our Greek-style yogurt and garlic powder, so we were certainly going to use that, but there was a sesame-peanut sauce mix and sesame oil so I made a bowl, threw in some cilantro and parsley and brought it back.
By that time my friend had placed the orders.
It didn't take too long before several plates of the meats we ordered were brought to the table. Most of the plates were beef, all beautifully rolled up, beautifully chilled, and arranged in rows.
But some forms of pork belly there were too.
The meal today varied between swirling the raw meat inside the pot of soup (I had chosen pork bone), grilling the meat on the small cute little grill in front of me, dipping the cooked meat into the yogurt that we'd brought, and eating it.
At least that's what I seemed to be doing most of the time.
Come to think of it, it was rather fun.
Maybe it is the quiet, organized, systematic way one has to have when having individual hotpots such as these. To have a hotpot this style is to be neat, structured and careful. It is not possible to be messy and have plates tossed here, there, everywhere when your table isn't large and everything is mostly square and you need to eat it like conveyor belt style.
Perhaps it was for this reason that I spent most of my time here alternating between swirling the meat in the pot, grilling the meat, stirring the soup looking for ingredients that I'd thrown inside the pot, and, of course, eating.
You would almost say it robotic.
Meat in, Meat out, Plate In, Plate Out.
So occupied was I with everything that I didn't realize just how many portions of vegetables I had taken.
See, there's no counter here that you go take vegetables from. You can either place an order on the app, or you have to wait by the conveyor belt for what you want to pass by and then you take them off to your table.
I had gone to take an extra empty bowl when I saw two bowls of lettuces on the belt and so quickly grabbed them both. Only when I got to my table that I realized I had in fact a half-eaten bowl on the table with leaves yet uncooked, and so on the whole that afternoon I ended up with four.
Two of cabbage, two of lettuce.
No doubt, vegetables are one of my favorite ingredients when it comes to hotpot- I always aim for the cabbages and the lettuces, but to have four bowls in a 90-minute time frame really takes the cake.
No regrets though.
I love how the leaves soak up the flavors of the soup without me really needing to drink the soup itself.
I also love the sensation of the soup bursting out from the leaves whenever I take a bite.
This afternoon not only did I get platters of meat and four bowls of vegetables, there were also some of the cooked food which my friend had ordered.
What they were, precisely, I don't remember really, but there was a dish that you were supposed to put on the grill and then just let it simmer. I think it was supposed to be an egg cooked in garlic, something along those lines. I remember the garlic being cooked. I don't remember whether I waited for the whole egg yolk to turn solid or not. I might not have.
I do remember the prawn, which, although kosong when it arrived at the table, we tossed in the cooked garlic from the little dish on the grill making it taste much better.
One of my favorite cooked foods from this place had to be the three big balls you see in the first picture (together with the meats) above.
Not that I didn't like the fried chicken (or was it chicken skin) but I thought those balls unique.
Almost like a dessert they were- huge, pong pong round, delicately sweetened with condensed milk, and made out of glutinous rice so they were pretty fun to chew.
I wish I had cut my portion of the ball up and put it aside to eat slowly piece by piece, and I'll probably do so next time, but this afternoon hungry me munched it all up at one go and then afterwards wished I had held back to go with dessert after.
Dessert here didn't have an extensive menu but it was sufficient. Besides the self-serve ice cream cups of the Mingo brand, there were Chinese desserts of Osmanthus Flower Jelly, Mango Sago, a Fermented Rice dessert, and Mango Ice with Milk.
It was between a Mango Sago and a Mango Ice, so I took the latter.
It turned out to be less sweet than expected.
Maybe you were supposed to mix it with the ice cream yourself or something. But perhaps it might have been that the bowl had an abundance of ice that made the whole dessert more balanced than the strong flavors of Chinese foods that I have come to expect.
Maybe next time I'll go for the Mango Sago and then I'll try mixing it with Vanilla Ice Cream (if they have) just to see how it tastes.
Mix and match is after all a distinctive pattern when it comes to hotpot and to BBQ, so yeah, glad I am to be granted the chance, and I'm definitely going to try it more when the time comes.