Zi Wei Yuan charcoal steamboat (紫薇园鱼头火炭炉)

My sister brought us to this steamboat restaurant at Jalan Raja Uda while we paid her a visit in Butterworth last weekend (Mar 22, 2008). This is one of her favourite dining places… and it turned out to be an excellent recommendation.

The steamboat was heated with charcoal instead of using the common gas stove, and the soup was special as well… (we ordered a set) with fried fish and taro cubes as the base. It tasted a bit sour along with the sweetness of the ingredients, which gave a very well mixed taste and flavour.

The restaurant offered decent options for their menu, mostly seafood, from cheap fishball dishes to expensive sea cucumbers and abalones etc… reasonably priced.

Address: 6525, Jalan Raja Uda, 12300 Butterworth (location map); Tel: 04-331 2736 or 012-452 4741 (closed on Wednesday).

Farmland is famous for its porridge based steamboat. It’s becoming a habit to bring relatives from other places to dine at these porridge steamboat restaurants, as these dining style is not really common outside of Klang Valley.

Farmland Steamboat Restaurant at Bandar Puchong Puteri, Selangor

I have previously dined at Farmland’s Serdang Perdana branch; this was my first visit to this Puchong outlet.

Just like the rivalry Eastern Delight, Farmland serves simple ingredients as well, and nothing spectacular unless you are ready to splurge on some abalones etc.

What makes porridge based steamboat special is that it would not obscure the original taste of the ingredients. Besides, after some cooking, the flavour of the ingredients would spread into the porridge, thus giving the porridge some really nice taste.

The major different between Eastern Delight and Farmland is probably the ‘thickness’ of the porridge (the steamboat base). ED’s porridge was normally thicker than Farmland… it depends on personal preference on which is better, but both are acceptable to me.

Location map (Tel: 03-8068 1880 / 8068 2280)

Eastern Delight is famous for its porridge based steamboat. This Sri Petaling branch should be their first outlet; they also have branches at Kota Damansara and Sunway if not mistaken. Chose to dine here because my aunt had never tried porridge steamboat prior to this visit.

Porridge steamboat at Eastern Delight

The porridge steamboat is quite common in Guangzhou, China, but has only become popular in Kuala Lumpur in recent years. It’s still not commonly found in other cities like Ipoh or Penang.

Porridge steamboat is actually nothing much different than normal steamboat besides using porridge as the cooking base instead of variety of soups. The beauty of porridge based steamboat is that it would not obscure the original taste of the ingredients like most of the soup based steamboat.

Clay pot is commonly used for porridge steamboat because the porridge would easily stick to the bottom if metal steamboat pot is used.

Eastern Delight serves some pretty simple ingredients, and 9 out of 10 customers would probably agree that their food is overpriced… but their business seemed to be doing well regardless. In fact the restaurant was so pack that night that we had to sit at open space instead of enjoying the air-con inside the shop (hence the poor lighting for the above photo).

At the end of the dinner everyone went home with a happy stomach. Set aside the price, it’s not a bad meal… or else I wouldn’t have dined at the restaurant for numerous occasions.

Address: No 26, Jalan 14/149L, Sri Petaling, 57000 KL. Phone: 03-9059 3545. The restaurant is located at a shop somewhere between Sri Petaling and Happy Garden, a bit difficult to find if you are not familiar with this area.

The standard set for 6 adults; and the boiling steamboat

We ordered the standard set for 6 and some side dishes; would have ordered more but their menu choices were quite limited.

The food turned out to be just ok. Their seafood was not as fresh as anticipated despite branding themselves for Ketam seafood, and their fish balls weren’t the best that I’ve tasted.

They did offer something special with their fried taro cube and bean curd, but special doesn’t necessary mean tasty.

The bill was around RM110 – reasonable. To be fair their steamboat is not really bad, but I know better places for steamboat… it was my first visit to Ho Ho, probably the last as well.

I am quite impressed by their website though (with location maps and reservation number); there are not many restaurants in Malaysia that have proper websites like theirs.