You know, it is really surprising, but I haven't forgotten this hotpot that I took at Paradise Hotpot over at Bedok Mall a couple of months ago.
Maybe because I haven't had much chance for hotpot this year- not as much as I'd like- so it becomes extra memorable every time I queue outside this place waiting to go in and begin cooking my food.
My love for hotpot has grown tremendously in the last couple of years after my friend and I started exploring different hotpot places around town.
I like the shared pots.
But I like the individual pots better.
And that's what Paradise Hotpot offers you.
Every diner who comes in here gets their own little individual pot of soup, which they can choose from a variety of six, or is it seven. Some diners jump straight into the spice of Tom Yum soup base and Spicy Szechuan soup base. Others go for the mellow ones like Clear Chicken soup base and Century Egg with Coriander soup base. Vegetarians have the option of Cordycep Flower with Mushroom soup base. And if you're traditional- like I am- there is Authentic Pork Bone soup base and the Teochew Pork Bone with Dried Shrimp soup base.
I take the Teochew Pork Bone with Dried Shrimp most of the time.
My friend, on the other hand, fancies the fragrance of the cordycep flower herb, so his soup is often that.
It's not that I mind the Clear Chicken or the Tomato with Sweet Corn, but I like the pork bone soups a bit better.
What's incredibly charming about Paradise Hotpot here is not just the individual pots one can have, but how they've combined the joys of cooked food and hotpot food together in one single meal.
There has never been a time, I tell you, that I've come here and not seen a diner happily going around getting their favorite cooked foods.
Some of the most heartwarming sights are not seen at the counter of chilled hotpot ingredients, but at the counter island where pots and trays of cooked food dishes lie.
Younger diners, myself included, tend to go straight for the finger food. So far that I've been there, I've seen spam fries, sweet potato fries, fries, chicken nuggets, bean curd rolls (the kind you see at dim sum places) and, on occasion, fried wantons. There's always a variety so you never really know what it is you will get on that day.
There was a day I got youtiao dough fritters with a little bit of stuffing inside.
Today my plate had a single spam fry, a sesame dough stick, some chicken nuggets, and a bowl of curry fishballs.
The curry fishballs are one of the dishes I always take whenever I come here.
To many people these might seem ordinary- "just normal fishballs in curry, right"- but there's something about the color, and spice of this dish whetting the appetite before I go to the main hotpot meal.
What's funny is that I can't seem to take just one fishball, or two. I must take at least three, or four.
And I finish them.
I don't leave them in the bowl uneaten.
The curry serves as a sort of dip for the rest of my hotpot food as well- although, frankly, not much- as my friend and I tend to bring our own dip there to go with the meal. It's not because we don't enjoy the sauces there- I am a fan of sesame sauce, sesame oil and coriander- but because Greek yogurt mixed with miso serves up a bit of sour cream with meat vibe whilst working the digestives very well.
Like always, I helped myself to my favorite hotpot ingredients at their chilled counter.
It is never easy to decide just what to take, honestly.
There are days where I look at their green leafy vegetables- the kind with stems- and wonder if I should help myself to some spinach. There are days when I wonder if I should include vegetables like carrots, sweet corn, tofu and black fungus. Or help myself to the many different varieties of mushrooms. Not to mention, the variety of hotpot ingredients like frozen meatballs, frozen cuttlefish balls, lobster balls, cheese tofu, fish cakes, or cheesy chicken balls.
But then my eye keeps getting drawn to the cabbages and the lettuces, the latter which I really love, and I find myself reaching for plates and plates of Romaine lettuces that I dunk into the pot and let them simmer there.
Some days I take cabbage.
But it is Romaine lettuce for me most of the time.
I love the color.
I love the size.
I love how the leaves absorb the soup without being too much or too little.
My plate today included a serving of noodles (I just so happened to be in the mood) and quail eggs, which, being a favorite of mine, I always take.
Just like the fishballs, I can never stop at one when it comes to quail eggs.
So I took three.
Or four.
I also didn't limit myself to just one plate of vegetables same way I didn't limit myself to one tray of meat.
The Romaine lettuces had me going back for at least three to four rounds, and the meats, probably eight or nine.
There're generally two types of meat we take whenever we come here. On occasion we take chicken but most of the time, it's pork.
There're also a few kinds of pork to take, but the one I like and always go for are the Sliced Pork Belly.
Sliced thin, they always come cold and chilled. So they might be of the frozen kind, but it doesn't matter. They feel fresh to me, and their size makes it easy for me to keep dunking them into the pot, stirring them, taking them out, and alternating between their tender meat, with everything else inside.
Today we had at least six or seven trays of the pork belly altogether.
Some of the slices I had together with my vegetables, my quail eggs, and my perfectly cooked noodles.
I'm very ngiao when it comes to how I like my noodles to be prepared, by the way. On one hand they shouldn't be too soft. On the other hand, I like them to have a slight bit of chew so that they're fun to eat.
It takes a bit of swirling around inside the pot with my chopsticks to determine the right moment that I should take the noodles out.
But with hotpot I usually get it right.
This combination is really one of my favorites. All at once I get the chew of the pork belly, the pleasant burst of soup from the lettuce, and the warmth of the noodles. I can't remember whether I had this bowl plain, or with a little bit of the sesame sauce. I might have added a little.
By this time I was starting to feel a little full.
But I didn't want to finish my meal without having another plate of the cooked food- very silly otherwise.
So back it was to the island counter where this time I looked at some of the other offerings they had. There was a soup- I think it was one of the double boiled kind, then there was this huge pot of braised meat that I think was particularly appealing to the senior diners in the restaurant. I saw a tray of fried rice, stir-fried cabbage, another tray of fried radish cake, and some other specialized dishes that would form part of a meal eaten in Hong Kong.
I took another bowl of curry- no fishballs this time- and a couple of char siew paus fresh out of the steamer the staff had just brought out, but it got quite hard trying to decide between the spam fries or the mung bean sesame balls.
I mean, I don't get to eat luncheon meat very often.
In the end, the mung bean balls won.
I had missed out on them the previous time.
Wasn't going to let it happen again.
Of course, there can be no hotpot meal without any dessert.
So, never mind that I was really, really full by now.
I had myself a cup of chocolate ice cream with some of those bursty pearls, and a bowl of tau fu fa soy bean curd, of which, for some reason, I don't have a picture.
