2.9
out of 5
Center Stage
Telephone: (65) 6333-9844
Website: http://www.hotpotculture.com
Category:
Restaurants » Buffet, Steamboat
Enjoy an exciting, fresh, contemporary Asian dining experience!
Set in a hip & vibrant restaurant atmosphere, you are immediately attracted by the colors, sounds & smells permeating throughout the casual dining restaurant.
Whether it's the porridge buffet for lunch or the hotpot ala carte buffet for dinner, the Hotpot Culture Team promises you quality food & friendly customer service always!
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Overall Rating:
My first experience with hotpot culture was about 2 1/2 years ago at tiong bahru plaza.
Back then the quality was much better.
Yesterday however was a big dissapointment, and i am beginning to question the standard of the food and service of many restaurants. I found the staff at HPC (thats how they call themselves) to be very "stressed" and hence quite rude when asking you if they can clear your plates or if you like to have the desert now etc....and the place wasnt even 50% full
Foodwise, my god, has the standards dropped.
Chicken Soup - Tasteless
Beef slices - There was a certain sour smell and taste to it, hinting that its been frozen a bit too long (most meats in singapore are frozen meats, but this one was bordering on expiry i think)
Chicken strips - they were cut sooo fine they could be mistaken for noodles.....
pork slices - it took them forever to deliver this and it had the same issue as the beef.
The rest of the food werent appealing at all, and i didnt heed my own advice to people when wondering if you should try the buffet at a particular restaurant, ask the staff if you can have a walk around first before sitting down just to see if you like the food.
The cooked food was all over seasoned over cooked or over fried, usually a sign to hide the "un-freshness" of the food. The tahu goreng in my opinion has definitely gone bad, but my mood was so poor i didnt bother to complain.
The best thing about the place was probably the fact u get individual pots, the condiments, and the chocolate fondue for desert. But its a steamboat buffet, and i dont care how nice their desert is.
$23 after taxes. And a lot more unhappy after. I know to some people this is cheap for all-you-can-swallow. So i guess the question is how much you like to abuse your taste buds
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Went there recently in Mar 09.
I think the smell of the fuel they used for the individual pot should change as the burning fuel did reduced my appetite greatly.
Soup:
Taste of soup too strong hence masking the taste of the food. Especially the Laksa soup base. Quoting my friend... "Everything tasted like Laksa..."
Food Variety:
Fresh, especially the vegetables but we don't see much meat though. Variety of cooked food and raw food is wide though I don't know why there are so many spicy cooked dishes on the menu. The Douhu Goreng is not bad if they did not overcooked it till its (very) hard. The black pepper (I think) beef is good too. I liked the spring onions and other condiments provided.
Dessert:
Poor and I must agree the chocolate of the fondue saved the dessert section as without it, there will only be mashmellow, fruits and some banana walnut cakes.
Service:
Except for some no-smile-policy people from China, the service is quite fast considering the place was packed when we went there.
Can go again. However, do not wait till too late to order the chocolate fondue as there won't be much things left to go with it. (We had only banana, strawberry and mashmellows)
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Had lunch here. First time here after my gf tried it and say it is ok. ok for her with small stomach. more than ok for me with big stomach.
This is part of the rajah inn in tiong bahru i think. There is a large spread of food. The food sections are as follows:
1) Porridge-style dishes
Mostly the normal type of dishes to eat with porridge. eg. beancurd, pork (kong-ba), salted vege, peanuts, tau pok, etc
I loved this section a lot. The dishes are well cooked except for a black coloured salted vege which is way too salty and hard to eat. Best is the beancurd(those eat with kway chap type). The kongba is fabulous
2) Normal buffet dishes
Normal buffet dishes like beehoon, chicken, fried fish, beancurd with pork, egg with cabbage, etc.
The food in this section was below par compared to outside food court i feel. The chicken and fish are too hard. The egg is too oily and hard too..
3) Porridge and rice
The porridge is those sweet potato type of porridge. I like it a lot though i feel can have more sweet potato in it. The sweet potato is cooked until soft which is good. The porridge is also quite 'soft', not those like rice water style. There is also rice which i didnt try.
4) Desserts
The desserts consist of only the greenbean soup, bubur pulut hitam and buns (for eating with the kongba). There are fruits too.
The greenbean soup is too diluted. The hitam thingy is the black glutinous rice dessert. It tastes very good. Not too wet or dry. Can eat with the coconut milk (white sound thing beside it which i assumed is coconut milk).
Other than these, there are also a few compilmentary dishes. There is this cold beancurd with pork floss on it and gravy. Normally, i don't like to have cold dishes with hot porridge but this is super good. You must try this. There is also the sweet and sour pork.
Not too noisy a place. Nice place for a chit chat. Friendly waitresses too though everything is self-service.. haha..
Overall, it is a very nice buffet. The price is also quite worthwhile(based on my food intake and not my gf). My gf certainly look very happy (considering she found a cheap place in town for her always hungry bf.) What is better is that the weekend and weekday buffet prices are the same ( until less than $10 per person). Lunch buffet from 11.30 -2.30. There are quite a lot of people from 12.45 onwards.
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I have make an reservation with hotpot cuulture after reviewing the webpage and recommendation from yebber .
However, to my disappoint as what Pharque had said the food is not as delicious as it is .
On sunday morning i went there with my friend for porridge buffet. And all of us were baffled , as all the food is like SO CHEAP ! i mean the cost to make the food. EXAMPLES : SALTED EGG , SALTED VEGETABLE , HOTDOG IN sweet and sour sauce, The meats only have the three-layer meat , fried duck's meat, fried fish ( TO be frank : All the meat taste below than average , i can get a better one at coffee shop !
END UP , all our mood were destroyed ! ( we were holding a birthday celebration for one of my friends.
SO FOR THE MONEY MaTTER , although you will think it will be worth it .
but i can tell u , it IS NOT WORTH IT ATLL .
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It must be a furor when I gave those pathetic 3 stars.
After much recommendation and hooha on TV over this HotPot Culture, I chose this place to be where I'll be treated for dinner as bday gift from mom while not burning her pocket.
I was so looking forward to it over the whole week and finally I got to eat it just now.
The lady was so polite at the reservation's I was so sure that it is going to be a wonderful experience.
I sat down excitedly and was happy with the service. I impatiently ordered for herbal broth though it wasn't highly recommended.
My sister took the Chicken one which was highly recommended.
When the soup came, I happily went to the uncooked food spread to get stuff.
Variety wise, I loved how fragrant the sesame oil was and the shallots were crisp! I have never really seen so much variety of veg, and also those yong tao hu stuff. There were also dried pork skin. Fish, chicken fillet and pork liver!
I dumped everything into the soup and the soup was really nice!
However, to my disgust, the dried pork skin had an awful oil smell, the veg was alright, the yongtauhu stuff was average.
At that point of time, I wished there were individual teppans.
The fumes kept tearing my eyes I don't know what to do, but no choice.
So we ordered the food.
I ordered some fish that was rather spicy, assam prawns, bacon prawns, minced pork with mushroom, pork, shitake, etc.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Fish was so unfresh it was so unexpected that those on the uncooked buffet spread was better, and probably the heavy chili was there to mask it,
Assam prawns had the same theory. Prawns were unfresh too.
Bacon was over fried the bacon was fullatoomuch oil, and shranked really bad. Prawns are the same batch of stale prawns.
Minced pork with mushroom was....SOUR??!!!
Shitake was best.
Fried rice was rather oily but otherwise fragrant, so i ate that whole night, and with the soup....
The night was half saved by the chocolate fondue.
The chocolate was really just right I won't get sick of it.
However, the bananas, honeydew and strawberries were SOUR.
but watermelon was juicy.
DID I SAY HOW GREAT THE BANANA CAKE WAS? especially with the chocolate????!
but by that time the chocolate was rather burnt. When I put out the flame, it hardened, if i put it back on, it gets burnt.....argh.
The ice cream were so bad that it literally fell apart.
it did not even stick together....i wonder if u understand what I am talking about lol.
ANYWAY, did anyone mention over here that the drinks are at restaurant rates, and the plain water is 50cents per glass????
Well, not that I wanna complain. They've GOT to make money right???
Sadly, I am VERY disappointed that the standard (i suppose) dropped so drastically, and I never got to get the standard I expected it to be.
Very unsatisfied.
- 3 more comments »
Login to add your comment. Or, Register for an account now. It's free!Based on your description, I would have give 2 stars :p
30 Jun 2008 at 9:14 am
i only gave three stars because of its service and the chocolate...which saved the dining experience :)
30 Jun 2008 at 12:26 pm
seems like someone got a similiar experience as mine, some time back.... anyway, can finally tell a honest feedback. :)
30 Jun 2008 at 8:22 pm
A pretty interesting steam boat concept found in the Hotpot culture located at Marina Square. Reason for why i find them interesting is that, it does not only provide steam boat indregients but also the ready cooked food.
Im really not a steamboat fans, but since my friend wants to try them out, i decided to just go along. There are 2 different prices on their ala - carte buffet, if one is going to visit them during weekends, it will cost about 24 bucks, however if one visits them on a weekdays, this buffet price will drops to less than 20 bucks.
Almost every thing that you can find in the menu is considered free flow. Just one thing that is not, will be the drinks. Oh well, just how can one have steam boad without drinks? Haha, so in the end, we have to order some plain water (not mineral water) which is chargeable at 50 cents each.
Some of their items for steam boat were found in the bar, and i certainly do not think that their varieties is alot. They categorise them into two sections - vegetables and meat. For the vegetables section, they have cabbage, yam slices, corn, tomato, etc. As for the meat section, they have hotdogs, fish slices, vegetable balls, prawn balls, tofu, sotong balls, fish balls, crab balls, etc. For a moment, i nearly thought that there were no prawns, beef and mushrooms available. Then did i realize that one will have to specially order for them. Not to worry, they are free flow as well. :)
I pretty like the various types of 'balls' found in the steam boat, each were of a significant size and looks really appetizing when cooked. However, i was pretty disappointed with their mushrooms, as it looked as if they were not washed properly. In the end, we decided to give them a miss.
As for their cooked food varieties, i was certainly impressed. One can find chicken, fish, seafood for their meat section. Not forgetting about tofu and vegetables that were available too. All these cooked food were free flow too. Given the enormous amount of food, its really difficult to taste them all completely. :P
Few of my favorite cooked food, includes the siken toufu, the tahu telor and the handmade meat balls. The siken toufu is super crispy on the outside and super soft in the inside. A marvellous combination and together with some sauce, one will be able to taste the spicy hot (super nice) toufu. Its so nice that i have 3 offerings of that.
The next nice dish have to be the tahu telor. I believe the main ingredient of tahu telor has to be its peanut sauce. And the sauce found here has just the right stickiness and sweetness. One will not feel them over empowering or too nutty.
The handmade meat balls were drizzle slightly with some sauce and this should be considered one of the lightly taste dish. So much so that one of my friend acutally tell me that this dish is tasteless. But, i feel that this dish has a very fragrant smell and the slightly crispy crust gave the meat balls a very delicious taste.
Dessert wise, one cannot forget the chocolate fondue. Although the real fondue may seems very different from the picture shown, it tasted reasonably ok. I pretty like that fact that it uses dark chocolate and together with the sweet marshmellows, bananas and strawberry, it gives one a pretty bitter yet sweet feelings.
Overall, its a pretty decent place to get lots of food. Although not every food can suit alls taste, i believe one should be able to find some to their liking with their varieites of food. Their service was pretty ok and given that is our first time partonizing this shop, they offered to give us some explanation before we start our buffet.
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Hotpot Culture serves lunch porridge buffet daily from 11.30am to 2.30pm. At just $7.90 plus plus for adults and $6.90 plus plus for children, this lunch porridge buffet is very value for money. With over 30 varieties of dishes to choose from, everyone will be spoiled for choice!
The signature dish Crispy Fish Fillet is crunchy outside and soft inside. Goes very well with the sweet potato porridge, which is served hot and with chunks of sweet potato and nicely cooked porridge.
Curry chicken, another of their signature dishes, was flavorful and not too spicy. Chicken meat is cooked to the right texture and absorbs the curry flavor well into the meat.
Ever have cravings for good free-flow porridge, go give Hotpot Culture Porridge buffet a try!
Overall Ratings
Food: 3.5 stars
Service: 4 stars
Cleanliness: 4 stars
Value for money: 5 stars
Login to add your comment. Or, Register for an account now. It's free!(3.5 4 4 5)/4 should = 4.125?
18 Jun 2008 at 12:09 am