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2013-09-22
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First of all, why 798? 7 stands for seven types of meat, 9 being nine types of broth and 8 for eight types of sauces. Opened its doors to the public in March 2013, a fair amount of crowd was present on a lovely Saturday afternoon, with the rain came after to suit the comforting boiling hotpot sensation. I was pleased with the simple yet clean arrangement, in terms of furniture, setting as well as organization of food. You can have a pot all to yourself, great for people who loves this concept.A
A recommended sauce would be a mix of beancurd sauce, chilli flakes in oil, fried garlic, coriander, a dash of sesame oil and vinegar. Next to it is sour and spicy sauce, usually the default sauce containing blended chillies which was decent.At first I thought the peanut sesame sauce would taste weird but I was wrong. Not only the nutty and sweet sauce is good on its own, dipping them with meat slices and meatballs were surprisingly a good match.
Suki sauce is not a standalone sauce, hence feel free to mix with other ingredients to create your personal favourite dipping sauce. It has a sweet and hint of sourness as original taste without additional mixing ingredients.
Moving on to the most important shabu shabu elemnt- the broth. I had winter melon broth (2nd row, left), mild sweet taste but winter melon flavours were not appealing. However, the soup became gradually sweeter with addition of meat slices and vegetable. We agreed and commented that the pork bone broth (1st row, right) and tom yam broth (2nd row, right) needs more improvement as broth is a basic criteria to a good shabu shabu experience. Both of them lacked flavours it should have, we can’t taste any apparent pork bone flavours nor sour kick for the latter. The only left would be herbal soup, very light in herbal essence thus not the best we have had.
The waterchesnut and loh han guo herbal tea earned some brownie points as I prefer this kind of healthy Chinese drink to be served in a buffet style restaurant. Personally, I love the pleasantly sweet yet refreshing waterchesnut drink. Lime juice that looks thick enough was well accepted by another foodie as it did not disappoint too.
Properly sliced meat and well presented, not only pleasing the eyes but also good for stimulating appetite. They were fresh and all of us enjoyed without any complaints. Available choices are pork, beef, lamb, chicken, dory fish, venison and abalone
Apart from the usual fishballs, worth mentioning meatballs or other hotpot ingredients would be cheese tofu, bursting pork/beef ball and stuffed fishballs with minced pork. So far there is no ‘overly frozen’ taste in those meatballs hence freshness and quality is well assured, I hope this will continue for long term benefit as well.
Judging from the quality and variety of food and beverages offered, the price is pretty reasonable and worth trying. 798 Shabu Shabu is conveniently located opposite of Celcom Blue Cube or a short walking distance from Starbucks.
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