Bak Kut Teh Steamboat

April 29th, 2006

a whole bunch of us decided to meet up today for STEAMBOAT! not just any boring chicken-stock-soup steamboat, or even porridge steamboat, or tomyam steamboat .. but BAK KUT TEH STEAMBOAT!

haha the mind boggles. but it’s such a genius combination that we simply had to check it out!

the name of the place is New Taste Steamboat, and it’s located in Taman Billion, Cheras. it’s a typical steamboat-type place, albeit a little smaller and much cleaner. the 20 of us arrived at 7pm, and even though they’d only just opened 30 minutes ago, 3/4 of the place was already filled. and through the evening, more and more people just kept swarming in! hehe definitely a good sign for the picky eater. not me la. just picky eaters in general.

i love to have dinner with Darren cos he’s sooooooo nice! he ordered all the liu for us, washed the utensils for us, distributed the chopsticks and saucers, gave out tissues, ordered the drinks, tended to the steamboat flame, called for extra soup when we ran out, and just basically looked after the bunch of us kids. heeheehee. we were all bullying him - “darren i want coke!” “darren i want leong cha!” “darren pass the tissue la!” “darren the soup finishing liao!” “darren WHERE ARE MY CHOPSTICKS” “darren FASTER LAH” - and the best thing about him is that he lets us do all that to him, AND lets us attack the food first before he takes his turn. ohmygawd. annjoe, how could you have let him go?!

anyway this is Darren, resident class genius, future neurosurgeon, Mr Nice Guy :

okay enough about Darren. so before the steamboat came we ordered side dishes of fried wantan (for the non-comprehending, it’s like fishpaste wrapped in dough and deepfried). they were so-so, not particularly mindblowing, but just your typical everyday wantan. it comes with a tartare sauce dip. and this other dip they have for the steamboat stuff is some special chili sauce thingy, which tastes really different from the usual chopped green chilli! it goes very well with the meatballs.

service here is actually a bit lembap. we always had to get the boss (his name is Andy, very friendly chap!) everytime we needed something done right. oh and dont get their leong cha (herbal tea) cos it is so not nice. stick with the chinese tea, really. and if you want extra steamboat soup, just go grab the pitchers yourself from the rack because they have so little staff for SO MANY TABLES, especially when more tables are opened up outside, so it takes yonks before they’ll tend to you.

everybody hates bad seafood when it comes to steamboat, so the freshness of the foodstuffs at New Taste was very welcome indeed. size-wise, the prawns coulda been bigger but we’re not really complaining. the stuffed fishcakes here are SO best. besides that, everything else is typical steamboat standard, we had no qualms.

the Bak Kut Teh soup base was so cool. correct me if i’m wrong, but i think this is the only place in KL that serves BKT as steamboat soup? novelty aside, i’d be lying if i said the BKT soup base was so fantastically good it shocked my eyeballs out. it was only fairly good - flavourful enough to be yummy, but not overpowering. i would have preferred if it had slightly more kick, then it would have been perfect. oh and IF ONLY they had served yau char kwai..!!! i must remember to recommend the introduction of yau char kwai (breadsticks) with much force the next time i go there!

price-wise, REALLY cheap. each of us ended up paying like .. eleven bucks?

we had a really nice time just eating and chilling, though i’m not sure if Darren feels the same way, hehehe. but hell yeah, steamboat is SO the get-together meal. we have to do this more often. and i think we’ll go back to New Taste instead of going allllll the way to Seri Petaling in pursuit of good steamboat.

next time we will come with yau char kwai!

New Taste Steamboat Restaurant (non halal)
Jalan Siput Akek
Taman Billion
Cheras
Tel : 0123862855 (Andy)

New Taste is on the same row as Charis Christian Centre and Kaki Corner, the street opposite Makro. Operating hours are 6.30pm till midnight.

Entry Filed under: Food, Photos