Restoran QQ

Although we're in hot, humid Malaysia, there are those cool and rainy days when I crave for something hot and soupy. Often, the good ol' steamboat comes to mind. We normally go to a steamboat restaurant in Taman Desa when the steamboat cravings strike but for a change the other night, we headed down to Pudu.

Somewhere in the deep, dark maze of Pudu is a bright and cheery restaurant called Restoran QQ. They specialise in something called the "Hong Kong Poon Chye Steamboat" for RM68.

It looked rather interesting but was way too much for 3 people to share so we settled for their ordinary steamboat with a mixture of soup and porridge for the steamboat.

QQ has their own home-made chilli in green and red which didn't show up too well here. I didn't really like their chilli. It was spicy, a bit sourish and tasted rather odd, as if some major ingredient was missing from it.

Our steamboat! Half was a herbal soup base with some Chinese herbs (I think it was yok chok and kei chi) which was quite refreshing while the other half was a smooth gruel-type porridge. I was too hungry and dug into the porridge first before the ingredients came and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was already flavoured, hopefully not with ajinomoto!

A huge platter of raw seafood on a bed of chinese cabbage arrived soon, much to our delight. From bottom clock-wise is some Japanese tofu, crunchy jelly fish and fish paste noodles.

On the other side is quite a few pieces of chicken, 2 prawns, a white pomfret (which was very cleverly sliced to look like 2 fish!) and your requisite various balls and dumplings. The vege ball (the orangey thing) is one of my favourite and the beef ball next to it was pretty good.

And, on the last plate, some beancurd skin, 2 eggs and a ball of yee meen.

Dump all the raw ingredients into the boiling soup and porridge, wait for it to come to a boil and enjoy! This was my first time eating porridge-style steamboat and it was rather interesting but a lot more filling than the soup type. The raw seafood and fish/meat/vege balls flavour the soup and porridge as they boil, leaving a lovely stock. Just towards the end, sis cracked the egg into the porridge which made it a really yummy flavoured end to the meal. Nothing beats swirly egg in hot porridge for comfort food on a cold day!

The Star ran a review on it too!