Steamboat / Potluck / Whatever.

Chuan Jiang Hao Zi (Steamboat Buffet)
12 Smith Street
Singapore 058926

Located in the heart of Chinatown's food lane, packed with stalls after stalls selling local delicacies ranging from Prawn Mee to Seafood to Kuay Chap, this restaurant is one of the few to offer Hot&Spicy Soup (Ma Lat Tong) to go with your meal. If you're wondering why steamboat when there's such a huge variety of other yummies available, the answer is most simple, value for money. HaHaHas. There isn't any particular reason to why me and E decided to eat there, its just because the restaurant came into view at that particular time, and we're hungry and also, its quite cheap considering the extensive selection of food provided. I guess all of the above kind of conclude that I'm a pretty stingy individual, so let me just tell you face on (literally) that... indeed I am. :P From here onwards, I shall let the images do the talking.

This is the abovementioned restaurant, located at the far end of Smith Street if you're coming from Chinatown MRT station. The inside's air-conditioned but if you prefer the outdoors, there are tables outside as well.

The interior of the restaurant, spotting classical chinese theme with huge wooden chairs and tables. The image you see hanging on the right contains instructions on the proper method to enjoy a steamboat meal.

The eating utensils. Wooden chopsticks, I like, at least the food won't slip down every other time, which most probably happens due to my lack of skills in using plastic chopsticks, but I refuse to admit that!

The boat/pot/whatever for us to cook our food in. On the left would be Herbal soup, while on the right is the much regretted order of Hot&Spicy soup which proved to be too much for any of us to handle. But it looks very nice right? Not forgetting to mention, huge too!

Unknown refillable appetizer. Seems to be made out of various vegetables and surprisingly, it tasted really good, with a hint of spiciness in it. We had a few plates of this alone, I think. We were given a menu (piece of paper actually) to tick on all the dishes that we wish to have, then pass it to the worker.

Sauces. Sauces. Sauces. Everything you need for a meal could possibly be there.

Here comes the food! prawns, slices of pork (bacon?), cuttlefish! ZOMGs! Everything high in cholestrol in a single plate.

We also had beef slices, mutton slices, chicken strips and the yellowish stuff you see there, are pigs' skin. Disgusting? Its super delicious I tell you.

And I never forget motherly advices okeh. Must take vegetables as well and not forgetting my favourite, golden mushrooms! A must have for steamboat, else its like eating KFC without the mash potatoes.

More veggy, the glittering blackish stuff there is pig's liver (slurps!) and some dried tofu thingy, I think the seaweed's hidden under all the vegetables.

Clockwise from top-left: Mushroom herbal soup lols, dumpling split into half, dumplings not split into halves, and the boiling Ma Lat soup.

Clockwise from top-left: More of the pig's livers (darling please don't scold me), beef on chopsticks, cuttlefish and veggy, close up of the cuttlefishes.

The bill came up to somewhere around 26SGD per person if I'm not mistaken, and that was before the GST hike to 7%. In the end, our stomachs nearly exploded as a result of stuffing ourselves silly. The herbal soup was good, not too strong nor too light and I supposed the other soup's supposed to be good (too spicy for me!) as well, since quite a number of patrons ordered that. Quite a good deal I would say but nothing special or extraordinary. Jed signing out because he just made himself really hungry.