short|cuts

Recently there’s been a craze in Singapore’s F&B industry. Quite similar to the likes of the Taiwan Bubble Tea, BreadTalk-led bakies and RottiBoy coffee buns crazes. The latest trend is Chong Ching (Qing) Ma La Huo Guo. It started in one place, become very popular and then spin-offs were everywhere. And me, being a trendy guy who likes his food a lot, is recently “addicted” to it.

I’ve only begin my conquest of tasting all the various variants. The counter so far stands at 2.

Chong Qing @ Chinatown

The place is ran by some Mainland dudes. The shop itself is rather small, but it has 2 floors. The thing is, though they have 2 floors, they only have a food counter located at the ground floor. The to make things worse, the food counter is miserably small. Worse still, it’s located at the entrance/exit of the kitchen. It does get really annoying.

The service level is acceptable, bearing in mind that we pay no service charge. But one thing I noticed is that the people there treat those ang mohs way bettter than locals. Offering to take food for them, mix the sauces and even cook for them. One may argue that they foreigners and they know nuts about steamboat besides fondue. But still, they do not have to go to such extend.

Bad points aside, food was their highlight. Their homemade meatballs are just heavenly. I can eat a whole tray of it! The rest of the items are standard feature. Fresh and always re-stocked. Another thing worth the mention is their bean paste sauce. It really enchances the taste of the food. The fish however, was full of bones (even the fillets!). They are always untouched. (Maybe it’s the shop’s cost cutting technique?).

- $20 nett
- Free flow of drink
- Food fresh, cooked + uncooked variety
- Speciality: Meatballs

Chong Ching @ Beach Road

This one is more no-frills. The food counter is bigger, service level was impartial. They even have a box of tissue for us to wipe off our mucus and sweat.

The raw items are very fresh but there’s no cooked-food variety. Their speciality is the dumplings. The fillings is a combination of “jiu cai” and minced meat. And they have real fish fillet, without the bones.

Another cool feature of the shop is that they play popular “K-songs” over the air. So as we eat, we would inevitably sing to the song, using our chopsticks as mikes. Actually if one guy is to come up with a shop where people can eat mah la steamboat and sing karaoke at the same time, I think it will be an instant hit! haha

- $15 nett
- Drinks @ $1/can
- In-house karaoke
- Speciality: Dumplings