December 26, 2008
鍋飽飽
The mother-in-law's place in Sindian is very much typical Taipei suburbia, full of high-rise apartment complexes filled with young families. With all the working couples, casual inexpensive family restaurants spring up like weeds to accommodate their dining needs. And what they need is more cowbell more shabu-shabu, as there are about 38,701,081 hot-pot places within walking distance. This one happens to be right downstairs, which is convenient for the wife in her very pregnant condition, and hot pot seemed liked a good choice on a cold night.
This particular location had recently shed its affiliation with the 白甘蔗刷刷鍋 chain to go its own way, and they were offering special discounts to build up a new clientele. Along the way it changed from the typical all-you-can-eat to a combo meal approach where you order the meat you want and it comes with a bowl of veggies and all-you-can-eat sides. For us it's not a big difference since it's more than enough food for us either way, even with the wife eating for two. She had the lighter kanbu broth while I was brave and went with the ma-la hot broth. The ma-la was certainly hot enough to kept me chugging away at the soda, but it's lacking the spicy complexity of a real ma-la hot pot broth, so I ended up doing a lot of shabu-ing in the wife's pot instead. It's not really unsanitary since the broths are kept in a boil the whole time, at least that was my justification. If you're still hungry, there's plenty of free noodles to cook in the flavorful broth to top off the meal. The generic ice cream was icy and artificial-tasting, unlike the classier places which offer Häagen Dazs or Mövenpick. But the veggies were fresh enough and the meats were a bit thicker-cut than the typical paper-thin slices at the all-you-can-eat places. Considering the cut-rate price, I was willing to accept some cut corners in the peripherals so long as they maintain the quality of their core competencies.
鍋飽飽
台北縣新店市民權路5-1號
02-29108851