BBQ Crabs and Steamboat Buffet at Tasty Pot

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Some people call it “Steamboat”, some call it “Hot Pot”, and some even call it “Chinese Fondue”. No matter which term is used, Steamboat is affectionately known as “Da Pin Lou” in Cantonese, and is a well-loved activity among a group of friends or family. Usually eaten during the night when the weather is cooler, steamboat is easy to make since only raw ingredients need to be prepared with little or no work beforehand. The most important item is a metal pot filled with soup of your liking, placed at the centre of the table. The pot of soup is then placed on top of burning flame and food is then slowly but surely cooked on the spot.

Metal pot filled with soup on top of burning flame = Steamboat

This activity is loved by many because it can be whipped up on the spot, even at home. Sometimes, when the weather is cold, we would bring out the rice cooker, fill it with water, add in some chicken stock and allow to boil. Then we would put in whatever we can find from the fridge into the simmering pot – be it fish balls, crab sticks, sausages, vegetables or even instant noodles! It’s the perfect comfort food, I kid you not.

Ladles for the soup

Of course, when the group is bigger and there’s not enough ingredients on hand, or you don’t feel like smoking the dining area, you can always opt for all-you-can-eat steamboat buffet that is widely available around the Klang Valley. Just like we did. The group of 5 of us visited Tasty Pot Steamboat at Dataran Mentari Sunway over dinner, to stuff ourselves silly with their steamboat buffet. There were about 6 choices of soup but we picked the Soya Bean Curry and Chinese Herbal variety.

Curry and Herbal Chicken soup

The variety of raw ingredients was pretty extensive. There were all sorts of balls – fish balls, meat balls, fish balls with fillings, crab sticks, fu chuk, beancurd with fish paste and so on.

All types of balls

While waiting for the raw ingredients to be cooked, we also picked out a few pieces of Chicken Wings in sesame sauce. They were well-marinated and quite nice actually.

Chicken Wings in Sesame sauce

More balls

Lotus root, black fungus, vermicelli noodles

There was also a section of seafood – prawns, squids, clams, mussels – which I mostly use to flavour the soup.

Selection of seafood

Vegetables will make you healthy

Our first plate

The fun thing about eating in buffet is that we get to walk around and explore the choices of food available, while picking out those that we like. There’s no need to please anyone because everyone gets to pick their own favourites, as much as they want. All we need to do then is just to place the ingredients into the simmering soup and watch them boil.

Simmering pot of steamboat

I enjoyed the curry soup, although it became quite ‘heavy’ to stomach after a while. It was flavourful and fragrant, but it became a little overwhelming when you’ve had too much of it. I guess I would stick to my choice of Tom Yam next time, for it’s lighter and the sourish soup does open up the appetite.

BBQ Crabs at work

Apart from the wide variety of steamboat items available, there were a couple of BBQ booths around, grilling Crabs and Lamb Chops. The crabs were certainly the main attraction there, since the amount was limited and each round of grilling took up to 20 minutes. So, there was always a queue when the crabs were almost ready. I was lucky to be able to savour 2 rounds of the yummy crabs!

BBQ Crabs

To be fair, the BBQ crabs were pretty huge and meaty. Most importantly, they were rather fresh with flaky and smooth meat instead of the powdery texture. Dip them into some home made chilli sauce for the best effect!

Huge and meat crab pincer

Grilled prawns

The Grilled Fish was pretty good too, stuffed with marinade and had a crispy exterior.

Grilled Fish

Last but not least, there was the BBQ Lamb Chop booth by the road side. It was manned by this adorable fellow because when I went over to take a picture of the booth, he actually said, “Wait!” and gave me a nice pose to snap. (I was actually meaning to take pictures of the lamb chops only, but sure)

BBQ Lamb Chops

Smile!

BBQ Lamb chops ready to be served

I found the lamb chop to be quite ordinary. In fact, it was a tad too dry for my liking, so I’d suggest you to douse it with more of the sauce – makes a whole lot of difference.

BBQ lamb chop with sauce

After about 2 hours of eating, we left with a stomach too huge for our pants to hold. The price of steamboat is RM26.80++ per person, but if you think about the BBQ crabs and the delicious steamboat soup, it’s not that bad. One thing to note though, drinks are not included in the buffet price. For the best value, I’d suggest you to go with a pot of tea at RM7 which is refillable and can be shared with a group.

Tasty Pot Restaurant at Bandar Sunway

Tasty Pot BBQ Steamboat Buffet Restaurant
No. 9, Jalan PJS 8/18,
Dataran Mentari, Bandar Sunway,
46150 Petaling Jaya,
Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia.
Tel/Fax : +603-5630 1282
Operating Hours : Daily from 12:00pm to 1:00am
GPS Coordinates: N3 04.635, E101 36.793