Hai Di Lao Hot Pot | 313 Somerset

So, after much persuasion from the boy, I finally got round to try this Hot Pot thingy. The reason why I kept putting off coming to this place because of the crazy waiting hours. Can you believe that I actually waited 3 freaking hours. 3 Mother Of God Freaking HOURS!!!! I would have skip the queue and head to other eateries by now but since its his friend's birthday, so I decided to be the good girl and stay on.

No seriously, never again. 

Although they do offer free services during our wait like free fruits, snacks and drinks, free fish spa and free manicure (some people specially come here to go for these), I personally don't really appreciate the need to wait for so long. 

But you can't complain really. Its such a new concept here in Singapore to have these services for free while waiting. So.... Yeah, its just a dilemma whether to complain or not. Sigh...

Now, onto the food... As you expected, its a steamboat where you dunk raw ingredients into their boiling soup (you can choose the soup base and we got Ma La spicy version and chicken soup) to cook them. 

The chicken soup was good. Like really good. They definitely know their stuff and scoop some soup into individual bowls for us to drink it straight. Yup, their waitress/waiter serves you throughout (hence the exorbitant price) your meal making you feel like a VIP. 

Look, they literally go all the way to peeling your prawns for you. Highly please with them being all accommodating. 

And surprisingly, the ingredient that we enjoyed the most was its luncheon meat (spam). Something about the meat soaking up the soup and bursting in your mouth just feels oh-so satisfying. The Fu Zhok (Fu Pi / Dao Kee / Beancurd Skin) acts as a good soup sponge too. 

The meat was alright. I mean, they are kind of fresh and thinly sliced but nothing to shout about.

The highlight would have to be this guy throwing and tossing around a pastry ball to transform it into a noodle. Yup, that's literally one long strand of noodle made right in front of us. We were impressed by his performance. Taste wise I guess its mediocre (most probably due to us stuffing ourselves full to the brim and still order 2 portions of noodle) but the texture was quite bouncy. 

This meal was really confusing to me. I wanted to like it but was superbly annoyed with the horrendous waiting time. And we spend about $50++ per person (not affordable either). So, this is a miss from me and I won't be going back anytime soon.

Rating

Taste: 4/5

Food Variety: 4/5

Ambience: 4/5

Service: 5/5

Price: 3/5

Waiting Time: -10/5 (Yup, you read it right, its a negative)