Steamboat at House of Steamboat

23/03/09, Monday - I had a steamboat dinner with the 5ofus at House of Steamboat which is situated at Tan Quee Lan Street (yes, it's along the same stretch of shophouse that has other steamboat eatery, including Tian Tian Steamboat). Initially, Gin wanted to have dinner at Cuppage Road, however, that Japanese eatery was closed on that day. Alternatively, we had steamboat.

Prior to that, I had vegetarian meal for lunch with my classmates and I was wondering if my stomach had some space left for a round of steamboat. And as one know that steamboat is pretty much a eat-all-you-can buffet and surely, anyone wants to maximize their dollars. So I tried my best to eat whatever I could.

When I went to the place, I was already late. I was flustered of what to do in the eatery when Ellie, Cheryl and Gin had started on their meal. I went to pick whatever I had taken a fancy to, which includes my all-time favourites, fishball, and the other food.

There were two choices of soup: the ever-popular Spicy (Ma La) Soup and Ginseng Chicken Herbal Soup.

Here is the thing. I was really eager to try the soup and so I scooped the Ma La soup into my small bowl. As a result of my eagerness, I gulped the spicy soup down my throat, thinking it was Tom Yum Soup. How interesting you may say. Not long after, I found myself choking and coughing due to the chilli seeds which might have stuck onto my esophagus. I was coughing so badly that tears began to roll down my cheeks. Cheryl was stunned and I guess everyone on the table and other tables were looking at this flustered girl coughing and choking. I immediately ordered an iced water to clear my throat. Lesson learnt, never ever be too greedy. :D

We get to choose whatever we feel like putting into those two soup base. Food ranging from seafood - crabs, prawns, cockles, crabmeat, fishballs and sliced fish. I must say the sliced fish was really good. I think they used dory fish.

We had a couple of servings of sliced fish. Then there were some meats, which are Gin's all-time favourite, sliced beef, pork and chicken. I didn't really try the meat though I did fish out some meats onto my plate. There were also other food such as corns, shredded yams, straw mushrooms.

Towards the end of the meal, the server gave us a plate of deep-fried mantou and from my first instinct, I recalled not ordering of such food. Little did I know that, it's actually a complimentary dish from the eatery as according to Gin. I tried two of those and it was really sweet and yummy.

Minutes later, Zoe entered into the eatery and surprised Cheryl with two slices of cakes - a heart-shaped strawberry chocolate cake and a strawberry shortcake.

We really had a fun-filled time catching up over a meal of steamboat and the meal was really good. Each of us paid about S$17.90 at the end of the meal. I may come back to try their steamboat again.