Hao Lai Wu Review: Steamboat And BBQ Buffet From $16.80+ At Chinatown

My sisters have a billion requests, and I’m always on the hunt for unique food places that everyone shakes their heads to. So my first thought upon entering Hao Lai Wu was that I had found just the place my family could settle on minus the long faces. With a BBQ grill and a steamboat, my mum could gorge on her soups and my sisters could grill the life out of everything they fancied in the buffet line.

Hao Lai Wu - Steamboat And BBQ Buffet At $16.80+ At Chinatown Steamboat at Hao Lai Wu Hao Lai Wu serves buffet lunch (11am to 3pm) and dinner (3pm to 3am), and the quotation for the former is $16.80+ on a weekday . If you were to come for a weekend lunch , dinner , or weekday dinner , it would cost you $21.80+ .

If you’re coming for dinner, a group of three is allowed 90 minutes, and a group of four, 120 minutes. You can find the usual processed food you’d pop into your steamboat, such as crab sticks and hot dogs, as well as vegetables, seafood – crab included – and a variety of marinated and plain meats. The staff recommended cookery the marinated meats on the grill, and some flavours they had were black pepper, char siew, and xiang la (hot and spicy) pork belly slices.

Out of the three, we enjoyed the black pepper pork best as it was both savoury and peppery, and the fats imparted a creamy savour. At this point, the soups were boiling and the aroma wafting from the pot made them a challenge to ignore.

For example, the chilli that was added to our ma la soup base was fried beforehand with 20 different spices, allowing us to request for a specific level of spiciness. Going to Herbs such as goji berries are, into the chicken soup, and it’s best to leave the soups till they come to a boil to allow the flavours to set in.

To test it out, we placed our hands on the pot after it had been in use for two hours, and it was hot but not enough to scald. We liked them best dunked in the soup and then grilled for just a minute to create that BBQ smokiness. Since most of them turned out pretty bland, we made the mistake of cookery the raw squid and cuttlefish on the grill.

Still, the smoky taste that the squid took on whet our appetites, and we decided this would be a good time to put the sauces to the test. Dipping them into the leek sauce gave the seafood a slightly spicy and salty taste, but there didn’t seem to be anything special about it. We reheated some of them on the grill to give them a firmer case, but they’re good either way.

Since it was crunchy and held most of the spicy oil it was cooked in, the black fungus was my personal favourite. If you can put past the fact that they’re pig’s ears, these were a little chewy and had a soft bone in them, which was addictive. The verdict With such an extensive variety of ingredients and two preparation methods, you’re bound to be satisfied.