Shabu Shabu Buffet City @ Puchong

What was supposed to be a good makan session at this Restoran Pao Xiang Bak Kut Teh (String Tight) –  Please don’t ask why! lol – turned out to be something better when the mentioned restaurant was still closed at about 5.30pm on a Sunday. Apparently it only opens at 6pm, but we couldn’t wait, no, we instead took our stomachs elsewhere and found ourselves in front of this Shabu Shabu Buffet City. The pricing at RM27.00 for a complete buffet meal was just a little too “beh tahan” or “super cannot tahan it’s too damn cheap” for us and so in we go!

Located in Puchong right next to Giant, it wasn’t very hard to find; no siree especially with that big a billboard! (DY couldn’t locate it thought, maybe it’s time for her to wear specs lol)

Having to pay up front first, Miss DY forked out RM27 for each of us, amounting to about RM71++. We then took the lift up (there were 3 floors!!) and got ourselves seated, BY NUMBERS!! Explanation below.

What makes this place special is the fact that they place their foodstuff in Conveyour Belts, or rather much known as Kaiten Belts. Coming in small portions, one only needs to grab what they each want and stuff it into their pot of stock soup!

The broth is really clean, and so the onus is on us to fill it up with whatever we want to create that ultimate tasting soup that we’ve all come to love when it comes to steamboats!

Our friend Vincent here is no doubt an expert; he quickly grabbed the tasty parts like Beef Meat, Scallop Cakes among others and quickly pot all of them into the boiling broth.

Here’s is one of the numbered panels situated at the bottom. The system works such that you may click on either Low or High to get your preferred boiling temperature. This is especially important when boiling raw foodstuff and things like Tofu, which can easily break under high temperature. You can also turn it On or Off with a simple click of a button. Beats having to guess the temperature in most other steamboat restaurants using dials instead.

Of I forgot to mention… as the set comes it also comes with freshly thawed pieces of lean pork meat (yes unfortunately it’s not halal!) that will obviously make your soup so much more tastier. It also comes with tasty sauces meant to zest up your culinary experience, with the usual chilli and a mix of chopped fried onions, lime and a hint of ginger. Yum.

The pieces of lean pork meat already looks appetizing without being cooked. Bet everyone of you is drooling on your keyboard right now 😛

Here we have DY and Vincent showing us how to do it right. A flurry of greenish and wan-tanish soup can be seen in the background… Expert siut!

This was how it looks like as time progresses. Oh look, they have squids served japanese style too! Anyway I digress. Look at our spoon, so mini!

Look at the cups on the left hand side. That’s Lemon Slush, a very refreshing drink that is available! Others include Orange Slush, hot green tea and Sky Juice, all self-serviced! Please note the amount of food around, and no, there’s no timing error; the picture above this has many more plates stacked behind, because it keeps getting removed by the ever hardworking staff!

It was a truly neverending experience… Constant taking from the conveyor belt, stuffing the raw materials into the soup, scooping out the cooked bits into your bowl while maintaining the sauce to make sure it doesn’t run out… it’s all so very tiring!!

People are also beginning to stuff the place up, and though we could feel noticibly warmer, this place is well ventilated enough such that it was still okay. Later I found out that there are people still waiting at the lounge so it goes to show how much in demand this Shabu Shabu Steamboat Buffet is 😀

Oh, we haven’t stopped yet 😛

Talk about multitasking, my friends were amazed at the fact that I could do so many things at the same time! Admittedly although this is a posed picture, it wasn’t far off from the truth. Action includes:

1. Using my chopstick to take pieces of cooked food into my mouth
2. Mouth munching on already existing chewed food
3. Right hand grabbing more raw stuff from the Kaiten belt, deftly using thumb and index finger to open the plastic coverage and dumping the contents simultaneously into the pot of boiling broth, ending with placing the plastic trays neatly in one corner and the plastic, the next.
4. The left hand is busy:
a) Reading updates on Twitter
b) Replying some of them
c) Taking pictures and uploading them on both Facebook and Twitter
d) Checking and replying e-mails
e) Camwhoring.

It was an ultimate display skill learnt in such a short time span 😀

At the end of the day we exited full and satisfied. The only warning we had was that if we wasted food above 100grams we would be penalized. Fortunately, none of us had that problem as we came ready to gorge the whole Kaiten belt down, didn’t we guys? 😛

One last thing to note: Don’t Pop in Your Fingers into the Conveyor. – as stated on their belt.

Why? Just don’t do it 😛