You know, seeing these pictures now I'm starting to realize just how much of this hotpot I genuinely miss.
When we first started coming here, I didn't think that there would ever be a season where I'd have to be patient for my next round of hotpot buffet. I had assumed, at that time, that the opportunity would always be present, that the chance would always come.
But life is such that you one day find yourself looking at a collection of pictures that you snapped a couple of months before and realize just how much you wish you could up and go eat it today, right now, no wait.
That don't mean that I don't appreciate all that I've had.
It just means I wish to have it more.
On surface it sounds greedy, but truth is, when faced with a hotpot buffet like this, how does one say no?
The charm of this buffet doesn't lie only in your choice of soup, the presence of ingredients that you throw into your hotpot, or the freshness of them all.
The charm lies in the cooked food, the drinks, and the desserts as well.
I suppose one shouldn't be that surprised by the presence of cooked food in hotpot buffets anymore, but it always leaves me delighted and full of smiles.
We always begin with our order of soup first. There're several kinds to be had here- offhand I don't quite recall what exactly they are- but there's Clear Chicken Soup Base, there's Tomato with Sweet Corn Soup Base, and there's Tom Yum Soup Base. I like to go for the Teochew Pork Bone with Dried Shrimp Soup Base. My friend chooses the herbal one in the form of Cordycep Flower with Mushroom Soup Base.
The soup gets served very quickly here at Paradise Hotpot.
Often is it that we have no sooner sat down that they bring out our individual pots.
I like to wait for them to come with the soup before going to get the food.
My friend, on the other hand, bops off happily to the counter.
There is a a fair bit of food to choose from. Whether it be the fried, the braised, or the steamed, there's a variety.
I often start with the fried- what they have here is mostly finger food style compromising of foods like popcorn chicken, sweet potato fries, fries, spring rolls, bean curd skins, and a host of other snacks that sometimes make for dim sum orders.
They have servings of fried rice, fried noodles, and even steamed cheong fun from time to time.
On the other side of the counter there're usually a couple of braised dishes- I've seen braised pork belly (in its very dark gravy), I've seen some variations of soup (seaweed, was it) then they have curry fishballs and then there're the steamed versions of char siew bao, siew mais and, on occasion, char siew sou.
I tend to be a little more cautious when it comes to the cooked food.
Not because I don't like what they have but because I want to choose the best of what I want.
I don't do the cooked food in a single serving.
Normally I do two.
So this afternoon I first got myself a plate of fried. On it there were a couple pieces of spam fries (for the fun of it), a piece of youtiao, and a couple of spring rolls. On the same plate too was a bowl of the curry fishballs.
Later during the course of the meal I got myself another plate- this time with the mung bean pastry that I had procrastinated about the other time (and therefore missed), another spring roll, deep fried scallops (a favorite canteen snack of mine) and more curry fishballs.
Don't laugh at my fishballs.
They might seem like a simple dish- just fishballs boiled in a curry gravy- but they're strangely appetizing and they make for a very great snack to whet the appetite.
Something tells me it is the bounciness of the fishballs.
But I think it is also the curry.
I use it as a dip for the boiled meats as and when I want to, and it's good.
Today at Paradise Hotpot we got ourselves trays and trays of them pork belly sliced.
Actually there were two kinds, but I don't know which is which.
All I know is that we ordered of each about four, or five.
And I love it that they came all pleasantly chilled, almost frozen, and cool.
The meal this afternoon alternated between dunking the meats in the soup, dipping them in our homemade yogurt dip, and eating them.
What I really liked about them unmarinated meats was how easily they cooked, how clean they tasted, and how well they blended the savory taste of soup together with our sour-savory dip of Greek-style yogurt, garlic powder, and miso.
The dip really works, by the way.
Not only does it complement the meat well, it yields the digestives, so much so that one doesn't feel as stuffed as you think you ought to be after all them platters of meat, plus everything else that you throw into the pot.
I don't know if there be people who come to a hotpot buffet like this and not take any of the other ingredients all so beautifully laid out on the chilled counter.
I mean, how does one not even look at the variety of lettuce, cabbage, green leafy vegetables, range of mushrooms, fungus, carrots, radish, corn, and all the other fun stuff like lobster balls and cuttlefish balls and silk tofu and egg tofu and cheese tofu? How does one ignore the range and variety of meat balls and fish balls and stuffed fish balls that they have in the the trays of the counter?
Okay, so I may not go for a lot.
But that's because I have a favorite vegetable and that is the only vegetable that I want to go for.
It dont matter if on the counter they have a lot more of other ingredients or other kinds of vegetables.
I'm arrowing just one type.
The Lettuce.
There's something about lettuce leaves in soup that I've always loved. So good are they that I can just have nothing else but them lettuce leaves in the soup and I'd be happy munching on them the entire time.
What's more, here they got the Romaine.
Big green leaves in a lovely, cheerful shade of green.
This afternoon, I helped myself to lots and lots of these lettuce, but I also took a couple of cheese tofu, a tongful of mushrooms, a tongful of ramen, and then, from the menu, a serving of complimentary mala dumplings.
I had thought they be numbing spicy, but to my surprise they were actually really good! The meat was big, the skin was thick, and the mala taste was not that of chili oil but wrapped inside the taste of the skin (and meat) itself.
I liked the chew of the dumplings.
They made for such a lovely complement to the (small serving) of ramen noodles and the mushrooms already in my bowl, it didn't even matter that by that time I was already beginning to feel full.
I was more or less cool with the mains by this time, but of course, Paradise Hotpot has dessert- and I wasn't going to leave without having any.
So off it was to the ice cream machine where I got myself a cup of chocolate soft serve, then, just for the fun of it, bopped over to the tau fu fa pot, and dropped in a couple of them cute tiny little taro balls.
Not the most conventional topping one gets when eating ice cream, but oy, why not, when it's there, it's unusual, it doesn't affect the sweet of the chocolate, and makes for a picture this good?