Yes, my posts have become extremely infrequent but in my defense, I am too tired to write in weekdays and I usually play all my weekends away. Haha...excuses excuses excuses...

I went down to Paradiz Centre for dinner at Hey Hey Hotpot with the gang. There were eight of us so we had two tables joined together and chose two different soup bases. I was thinking to myself that this place had better be good otherwise Dagen was going to get it from me. It was his enthusiastic recommendation of the place that got us down there and it wasn't cheap for a normal steamboat buffet. It's $25++ on weekdays and $27++ on weekends and we paid $32.50 each.

We made a reservation to ensure we could get a table on a Saturday night and I'm glad we did. The place isn't very big and it was practically full that night. Still, a location at Paradiz Centre is pretty weird. I would never think of going there if no one told me about. It's like some ulu pandan place in town where I have never been and I realized that I have never been to this Cathay place as well. We walked from Plaza Singapore and I kind of got disorientated. Fortunately I could just follow blindly, haha. Anyway, back to the food.

My table chose the fish soup with green apple which the other table had herbal chicken soup. I know fish soup sounds weird for steamboat but I do not like herbal soup so I refused to have that at my table. Very seh gor but I don't care...hahhahaha!!!

Their buffet menu had both cooked or uncooked food (for the steamboat) and I love their "satay" chicken. It's chicken pieces marinated and cooked on satay sticks. That was delicious though a little too salty after a while. The variety for the steamboat was pretty good. I had the tofu and it went really well with the soup. They served beef, chicken and pork and their beef and pork were finely sliced in shabu-shabu style. The beef slices even came on a tray of ice! Presentation was good and they also had golden mushroom wrapped with meat slices. That was yummy although we did get overindulged in meat that night. Their meatballs seemed handmade which ought to be good but I hated the smelly vegetables they added in. Their chilli sauce had the same vegetables as well and I couldn't take it. Oh yes, their chilli sauce can be mixed to your preference but it was too sweet for my liking. It tasted similar to satay sauce and I would have preferred sambal chilli. The most fascinating items that they had were these tiny dumplings filled with either custurd, prawns (har gao) or char siu (they call it char siu bao). You had to cook them for at least two minutes and I didn't think dim sum and custurd would go well in soup. However the custurd one tasted alright and I liked the char siu bao. The har gao had cheese in it which made it rather powdery. Still, it was something new that I had not experienced before.

Another highlight that night was seeing Terence Cao or Cao Guo Hui as others might know him as. Dagen was pointing out to us that he was over there but I thought that he was talking about the television (and I was not the only one who thought so) and I didn't really bother about what Dagen was saying. After all, he is an actor and it's not unusual to see him on the tv. After a while I looked up from my bowl of soup and realized that Cao Guo Hui was actually there in person. Apparently he and a partner owned the restaurant and he was there to help out. I must say that he is really good-looking. He does look so much better without the make-up and he looks so charming when he smiles. So us girls spent the night ogling at him, hahahhaha! Eye candy for the night!!! He also came over to our table and recommended their dessert which was either almond jelly or osmanthus jelly. By the way, his English is good. He didn't speak broken English or Singlish. I chose the osmanthus jelly which was not too sweet and tasted interesting. I gave half of it to Ah Hao but only because I was too stuffed to finish it. It won't be something I will order on its own because one small portion costs $4.80.

Some of us went back to my place for mahjong after dinner. Now I make people to weigh themselves when they first arrive and when they are about to depart. Haha...just another service I provide since I have a digital weighing scale. Besides, my friends seem to enjoy the process of seeing their weight go down after mahjong. Then we can tell ourselves that mahjong is good exercise that can help us lose weight. It's a delusion but at least we are happy.

Lovely Saturday night...I do recommend Hey Hey Hotpot. The soup is good and the food quality is great. Pity about the chilli but you can't have it all. The price might also deter some people so I guess I'll go back only when I'm feeling rich. Heh heh...