Singapore Restaurant Review: The Mushroom Pot @ Kallang

Situated on the crap (that is, non-waterfront) side of the Indoor Stadium at Kallang are two restaurants: Le Bistrot and The Mushroom Pot.  Pot - the first of two outlets in a slowly-growing franchise - is the second of a half dozen restaurants in this hoity-toity strip that we've dared visiting so far; the other, Brewerkz, mainly for its home-brewed pints of beer...  Elizabeth is going through a mushroom phase, possibly because of eating in this establishment, or maybe because of the Gurffalo - a book taking place in a forest with mushrooms drawn on almost every page that we race to spot and then fake-pick and eat  We're just not sure what came first, but she has been vocal about wanting to "go Kallang Leisure Park eat mushroom" in the past few weeks, and so we went there again this past Saturday.

The decor is "gallery modern" with Wacky-Tacky Orange-painted walls forming the backdrop to a collection of evenly spaced and vertically aligned macro-focused portraits of various varieties of wild mushrooms that Elizabeth and I fake-pick and eat throughout the meal.  We've eaten here only on weekends during lunch only (dinner costs more) and there have always been only 1-2 other tables besides us so the staff - a waitress, a bus-maid, and a hostess/manager/owner has been super-attentive, to the point of distraction as they baby-flirt with our daughter.  And attention is required, as you continuously order different plates of raw ingredients to add to your hot pot during the meal.

For those of you who have never experienced a hot pot dinner I have nothing but pity mixed with scorn.  This could be a good place to have your first, but the menu is horribly designed, and the choices are bewildering.  Even veteran hot-potters such as ourselves had some difficulty ordering on our first visit.  But basically, your all-you-can-eat meal begins with a choice of broth: wild mushroom, spicy Ma-La, or spicy/mushroom - ying yang pot with both broths separated by a divider.  We opted for the combo on our first visit, and dropped the spicy on our second - it's basically a vat of chili oil with a hint of the wild mushroom broth that is hard to focus on because you're just concentrating on taming the fire with your ice water after every taste.  There are also herbal concoctions, such as the cure-all Black Chicken broth, which you can choose from for a small extra charge.

Then you can pick up to 5 items from the starters/house specials list - these are cooked or cold-served dishes that do not go into the hot pot for further boiling.  We've tried a bunch but only appreciated a few: House Special Beef (tender and spicy), Monkey Head Mushrooms (fried and tossed in a creamy sauce with sweet-roasted walnuts), and fried squid with a wasabi mayo dip.  And now you can start choosing plates of raw (or pre-cooked) ingredients from the two abundant menu lists - hot pot buffet (meats, offal, fish slices, vegetables, noodles/rice, and even bread) and homemade selections (meat and fish balls, meat and fish pastes, and meat and fish paste-stuffed vegetables and mushrooms - reminiscent of yong tau foo ingredients).  It's hard to go wrong here - you choose what you already know you like and curious to try.  Just remember that excessive over-ordering does carry a penalty.  We especially like "5 kinds of mushrooms," tripe, pork stomach, the marinated beef - somehow much more tender than the raw beef selection - tofu (Elizabeth's fav), fish slices, golden mushrooms (not wild enough to be part of the wild mushroom selection?), Spinach and "Taiwan cabbage" (baby, curly bok choy).  But you can order as many items and as many of each that you can fit in your belly.  You won't come out of there hungry.

Really a footnote for completeness-sake, as this is superflous both here and during the meal itself:  Drinks are extra.  I've tried their chrysanthemum tean and boiled barley and was disappointed.  I'll stick to water or soda pop next time.  My other criticism is that the tables are badly (maliciously?) designed, with a noticeable and distracting shortage of leg room.

Compared to other Steam Boat restaurants we've been to in Singapore, this one falls in the middle for me, mostly because at some other places you can get more seafood items like crab and cockles that we particularly enjoy in this medium.  The choices of broth included in the base price are usually more varied as well, and, finally, it's more expensive than most other places we've tried.  Still, at ~SGD$25 per person (depends on when you go; Lizzy so far is eating for free) it's not a bad deal, especially for this upmarket location (we spend more on food when eating at Brewerkz).

I give this place 2 Goodyear Shiitakes - worth a forage, if you're in the neighborhood.

Malaysia, or How to Kill 7 Hours in a Car with Lizzy

On Friday we went to Malaysia to try and find a hiking trail in a jungle nearby - it's been almost 6 months since our last hike in NY (Harriman State Park).  This was a big mistake, as everyone else who owns or rents a car on this island went along with or just before us - Diwali is a Hindu holiday and is a national holiday in Singapore.

You get stopped both ways between Singapore and Malaysia for some reason - in Singapore to pay a toll (both ways), and in Malaysia only for immigration purposes - on the way out it seems only keep count since they check an exit voucher that you receive on entry.  We got out of Singapore no problem, but we waited 4 hours crossing a 2-mile road in-between countries.  This is called the Second Link - basically a bridge between Singapore Island and Malaysia and a small stretch of road in Malaysia before you get to the Kompleks Sultan Abu Bakar immigration checkpoint.  I am not spinning or exaggerating.  4 hours.  Stop & go, bumper to bumper, for approximately 2 miles.  The only saving grace was that we packed lunch and some fruit and water, and that our car came with a built-in DVD player and TV.  Still, how many times can you watch Toy Story and 100 Favourite Hebrew Children Songs?  We got into Malaysia at 5pm (we left very late, around noon, so shame on us, but we did not want to hike 12-2pm).   Since it was getting dark we decided to head to the nearest fishing village for crab dinner.

There were some interesting points along the way, like when we reached the toll booth right after the border and we didn't have MYR (Ringgits) to pay for a Touch & Go toll card.  And when Connie made me stop in front of a house in some village near Mt. Pulai that we were driving through, in order to buy soy milk from a woman standing in a booth in her front yard (the proverbial Malaysian lemonade stand).  Dinner at High King Seafood Restaurant was forgettable, except for the setting - it is situated at the end of a road that leads into a ferry terminal - where you can take a boat to Pulau Kukup.  The restaurants and shops along this road (this short stretch of road pretty much makes up the entire village) are all built jutting out into the water on top of stilts, and from High King you have a good view of the mangroves of Pulau Kukup just off-shore.  When we got there the tide was out and you could see salamanders splashing and crawling in the mud below.  By the time we left the tide had come in and it was water all the way back to the road.  We had some fried leafy greens, oatmeal-battered fried prawns, fish slices in brown sauce, and sweet butter-fried crab.

Things are relatively cheap in Malaysia - we bought slices of watermelon (red & yellow), pear, pineapple, papaya, and some unidentified mango-like fruit for ~US$1.50.  And dinner (fish, prawns, and crab + 500ml bottle of beer) was ~US$22.  After dinner, we did a little shopping (alas, they ran out of bootleg Toy Story 3 DVD's) and drove back home across the double border - another exciting episode when Connie drove through customs without stopping eliciting a super-thorough search of the car while we waited shame-faced nearby. But it only took 2 hours total from Kukup (fishing Village) to get home - what I had originally expected for our outbound journey when we left home in the morning.

Driving to Malaysia, check.
Hiking in Malaysia, TBA.