Chinese Hot Pot Disaster

Lost in Singapore - big shopping centre and a need for lunch - but wanted to try something a little different.

We decided to try a Chinese Hot Pot restaurant. We chose what I think might be the Hot Pot equivalent of McDonalds - Super Hi International / Haidilao Huoguo - available in many countries around the world. Apparently - “Not Just Hotpot, But Also A Culture Of Gathering”.

We 'google map' walked in the direction of the restaurant and found ourselves heading down to the next floor on an escalator to be met at the bottom by a very smiley young man in a very bright uniform, waving at us. That must be it then.

We confirmed that it was just for the two of us and he escorted us to our table. For some inexplicable reason he held his open hand in the air, right angled at the elbow, as we worked our way through quite empty restaurant to a free table.

We were handed an iPAD to order our lunch from. It appeared to be very intuitive - I’m sure someone spent a long time making sure it was. Well it wasn’t and I failed pretty quickly to understand it after hitting a few buttons (more about that later).

We looked at each other wondering whose idea it was (of course mine) to come in here without some sort of adult supervision - we aren’t even that good at chop sticks and this was well out of our comfort zone. Thank God there were aprons.

Hot Pot

Hot Pot

We decided to attract the attention of some help which duly arrived and I made it clear we hadn’t a clue what we were doing or how to order as it was our very first time, not just at the restaurant, but first time having this sort of food.

There was then a realisation that yes we didn’t have a clue what we were doing and we were then given a 1:1 session , slowly walked through each step of our order with lots of decisions made, advice given and appreciative nodding whilst smiling - which is a skill.

We were complete - success. All was looking great. That was until my first attempt at ordering started to turn up. I’d neglected to tell them I had already had a go. Our nice assistant frowned and started to try to recover the situation as more items began to turn up from first and second order. I clammed up, deciding the best idea was to suck it up and assume we would be able to eat anything that might arrive. Spoiler - we finished everything.

Food continued to arrive by robot - which was pretty cool. It would stop by our table, and it seemed that it was for the benefit of the staff serving us, as we weren’t encouraged (read not allowed) to take dishes from the robot. We were to wait and allow for the staff to transfer the dishes to our table.

The concept was new to us, as I've mentioned. Numberous small pieces of thinly cut meat and vegetables were dunked into the hot soup for anything between 2mins and 15mins - it's up to you. We opted for rice and noodles to go with it. The soup had a fantastic deep flavour and I had a good number of small bowls of it alternating with noodles, rice, meat and vegetables.

The meal was both an ordeal and an adventure wrapped up in a warm jacket of hot soup. The bill was a very reasonable concoction of the two orders minus some duplicates that were avoided. We did missed out on the sauces and fruit course - next time maybe.

When we left the smiley young man at the bottom of the escalator smiled, handed us a couple of bags of questionable snacks, smiled again and waved us off. It feels a little odd as a 56 year old to be waving back at such a brightly coloured individual. But we were in a happy mood. Probably 80% satisfied with our luck, and 20% to have overcome the ordeal, though it could easily have been the other way around.

That said - we will definitely be back as it was both lunch and an experience. We were lost and it was fun, and the food was great, and unlike their distant American cousins - felt healthy.

Lastly - I appear to have joined their points scheme - 72 points banked so far!