I had been planning to have hotpot here since gourmet pictures of colourful cuttlefish balls were posted.
Apart from that, their website impressed me as it was in English, Chinese and there was a downloadable menu.
According to their website (www.meganskitchen.com), they claimed to have fitted induction cookers/餐桌內置電磁爐頭 however when we sat down for hotpot we had to use the gas canister powered one, which was a bit scary.
Before ordering, the table was laid with sauces and condiments ($20/person) which are charged regardless if you use them or not, same with the preserved eggs and ginger ($20/person).
Apart from the wide choice on the menu, we were allocated next to a noisy table, which made it hard to concentrate on the menu. The restaurant was 30% full throughout the evening, even when we left, so I couldn’t understand why they didn’t space out the people.
For the soup bases, there were so many that it was hard to choose.
Ideally I wanted the crab and tomato soup with the souffle finish, purely because the souffle finish was a must, but then I thought it would be weird matching some of the ingredients in tomato soup.
Other good choices were the congee base with abalone, escargots in sichuan chilli and English Oxtail broth.
So not only Gao Gei has congee hotpot.
As for the escargot, it seems really fun to have escargots in it too.
Although the prices may seem pricey for the soup base, all the ingredients in the soup are actually edible, not only the soup base is pricey, the condiments are also pricey.
In the end I chose the Hokkaido curry, the soup itself contained apples, carrots and other wholesome vegetables that could be eaten as well.
Not all hotpot restaurants have treasures in the soup.
For my hotpot I chose rainbow cuttlefish balls, salmon and spinach dumplings, truffle and beef dumplings, lettuce and tofu.
The cuttlefish balls were nice and colourful when they arrived, from purple, magenta, green to yellow.
The lettuce was cut nicely and placed neatly in the bowl like pot of growing vegetables.
The rainbow cuttlefish were made from 7 colourful items: purple sweet potato (purple), spring onion (green and white), spinach (dark green), beetroot (magenta), pumpkin (orange), yellow bell pepper (yellow), red bell pepper (slightly orange).
As for taste, the cuttlefish used in making these balls were fresh, and you can just taste its freshness.
The spinach one was rather memorable, so was the sweet potato, however after putting it in the hotpot for a while, the colour is no longer purple, but it was inside.
The texture of the sweet potato one was interesting, you can actually feel the stickyness of the sweet potato.
Next best was the spinach and salmon dumpling, each dumpling was freshly made with salmon and freshly chopped spinach.
It was so fresh that when you ate it, the spinach inside is still jade green with a crunch just like freshly blanched spinach, and the salmon had a nice fishy taste to it.
I really liked this dumpling because all the ingredients were freshly done, and not grounded into a paste.
As for the beef dumplings with truffle, it tasted weird, no truffle taste at all!
There were other dumplings which I should try on my next visit, mui choi and pork!!
The tofu and vegetables tasted how it should, so overall I really liked hotpot here, except for the gas hotpot and depending where you sit, and the people surrounding you.
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