Suki-Ya Shabu Shabu at Pavilion has been one of the more busy restaurants located at Pavilion’s Tokyo Street ever since it’s inception a couple years ago. I’ve meant to give it a try for the longest time, but it’s always been packed, and I’ve only recently lunched there thanks to arrangements (ie: advanced booking la) by my colleagues.
Suki-Ya at Pavilion, there’s almost always a queue
Suki-Ya brands itself as a restaurant that offers modern healthy choices. The outlet at Pavilion isn’t exactly big, but I like the cozy ambiance and the very clean interior.
They have an ala-carte menu on top of shabu-shabu (or Japanese steamboat), but we stuck to the basic this time and only tried the default buffet, priced at RM 29.80 per adult for a maximum of 2 hour dining period. Dinner would cost an additional RM 10. Any extra time over the 2-hr block is priced at RM 3.50 per 15 mins.
Kinda sounds like paying for parking.
there are 4 types of soup to choose from
Like many steamboat places, Suki-Ya offers several choices of soup – the classic shabu-shabu that is light, sukiyaki that carries a hint of sweetened soya sauce taste, miso which is a little on the saltier side, and kimchi, one that carries a bit of a kick.
We chose shabu-shabu and kimchi since you’re allowed to split the pot.
Pro tip: Always start off with milder tasting soup so as to not overwhelm your palate too early.
beef, lamb, chicken, and the “healthy bar” full of veges and more
There are three choices of meat you can choose, and the waitress will happily serve as many plates of them to your table as you request. Do note that any wasted food carries additional charges though.
The chicken, beef, and lamb were all thinly sliced and served frozen. The beef only requires a quick 10 second dip to the boiling soup, while I’d advice to leave beef and chicken in for a little bit longer. They tasted pretty good with some dipping sauce.
we had a great time, thank you for lunch, HL
The “healthy bar” offers some 30 types of vegetables, tofu, mushroom, fish balls, and even clams. These are really mainly the healthier choices – food with less fatty contents. They are somewhat less luxurious, but for less than RM 30 I think it’s plenty good value for money, and you’d likely not over eat that much.
It’s not difficult to see the success of Suki-Ya and that long queue outside the restaurant on daily basis. If you are to visit them, I’ll advice to call and book ahead.
Other than Pavilion KL, Suki-Ya branches can be found at Paradigm and Mont Kiara Mall.
Address: Suki-Ya @ Tokyo Street
6.24.04, Level 6, Pavilion
Jln Bukit Bintang
Kuala Lumpur GPS: 3.148872, 101.713368 Tel: 03-2141 4272 Website:www.suki-ya.com
We have a friend in Winnie, who also goes by the nickname of hamsup (the origin of this is your extra credit homework, thank you very much).
When hamsup was working near my office, we used to have lunch every once in a while, but since she moved on to greener pasture, that has dwindled a bit, so we spent a bit of time catching up a bit over dinner at Bone & Pot (有骨气) at Kelana Jaya just the other day.
Bone and Pot at Kelana Jaya – plenty of soup choices
Bone and Pot is located opposite Kelana Jaya LRT station, parking is usually not a headache inducing exercise. The restaurant is clean, modern, and equipped with working air conditioning system that makes having a steamboat dinner a rather enjoyable affair.
For those who prefer sniffing haze and enjoying the great outdoor with smoking allowed, there’s the alfresco area as well.
fried beancurd, chicken “soft bone”, and squid with salt and pepper
While waiting for hamsup, we started with a few deep fried dishes to line our stomach.
The golden bean curd (RM 5.80) is a rather surprising dish, surprising in how soft and smooth the bean curd actually is, and with that golden slightly crunchy skin, makes a fabulous starter.
Salt and pepper chicken soft bone (RM 11.80) reminded me of the dish I had at Sumi Ka Yakitori at Subang, except this is in a deep fried form, equally as tasty. Salt and Pepper squid (RM 8.80) did not disappoint either, but I thought having 3 dishes that shares the same type of sauce (Thai chili sauce) was perhaps a bit too monotonous in retrospect.
Perhaps I should have used the other sauces available.
Like other steamboat places, there’s plenty of fish ball/pork ball choices available. We had cheese ball (RM 8.80 for 4), home made pork ball (RM 6.90 for 4), squid ball (RM 7.90 for 4), shrimp ball (RM 8.90 for 4) and mushroom with home made pork ball (RM 7.90 for 4) and fish dumpling (RM 4.80 for 6 pieces)
These “balls” mostly have pretty firm texture, with the cheese ball particularly interesting. I like them all, but couldn’t really taste anything other than the dumpling skin from the fish dumpling though. That’s one that I would probably skip.
Meat wise we had fresh lamb slices (RM 15.90), fresh beef slices (RM 16.90), and pork neck slices (RM 15.90). These are frozen meat that requires less than a couple minutes in the boiling soup. A word of advice – don’t leave them on the table too long lest you want the meat to go limp. They were fresh and we enjoyed em much.
Pork intestine (RM 8.90) came pre-cooked and thus you don’t need to worry about it messing up the taste of the steamboat soup, portion was definitely a little too much for this dish as only Horng and I ended up eating them. The girls did not share our palette for this particular internal organ. This goes very well with the sauce.
Finally, no steamboat is complete without vegetable, we had water cress (RM 4.90) and rocket (RM 5.50), and together they gave us all the vitamin C we needed for the next day (I think).
Horng, Yuki, Kerol, KY, Haze, and Winnie, we chose tomato & potato broth
As for the choice of soup, Bone & Pot offers some interesting choices. There’s their signature pork bone broth, pepper pork broth, preserved eggs with Chinese parsley broth, Tomyam broth, and the our choice of the night – tomato and potato broth. This is rather different from the usual clear soup and tomyam soup choices at other places.
Towards the end of our meal, the broth became very similar to HK style borscht soup, unique, filling, and complimented the mostly meat and processed seafood ingredients that we had.
With drinks, we ended up spending a tad over RM 30 per person at Bone & Pot. I consider it a place worth visiting again, the soup is top notch, ingredients are fresh, service generally pretty good, and while you do pay a slight premium, it is in line with what is offered.
Address: Bone & Pot No: 7, Jalan SS25/12, 47301 Petaling Jaya, Selangor GPS: 3.11400, 101.60061 Tel: 03-7880 5511 Hours: 5 pm to 1 am everyday
Lot 10 is one of those shopping malls that has seen better times. Some 15 years ago, it was the premier place to shop, that was before Suria KLCC, before Mid Valley, and of course, before Pavilion.
These days, Lot 10 is keeping up with the newer malls by reinventing itself a little bit, starting with the excellent food court that is Hutong, and now, the Shabu One steamboat buffet restaurant. I’m not sure if that’s their strategy, but stuffing the mall with good food might just bring in the crowd.
Shabu One, the new steamboat place at Lot 10
I first got to know about this place from my colleague Sheng, who has a bit of a hobby in monitoring online group shopping deal sites. The dude brought 4 coupons to the Shabu One, so we headed over to Lot 10 for a Friday lunch without much expectations.
After all, the full price for lunch/dinner was only RM27.99+, and we had bought the coupons for something like another 40% off of that.
seafood and fishball-ish choices are aplenty, check out the clams!
While the restaurant is certainly not very posh, it was clean and comfortable. If you’re looking for decorations the class of Shogun or Jogoya, this is not the place for you.
On the other hand, if you love steamboat with a good selection of seafood at reasonable price, this is the real deal!
veges, noodles, and there are some pre-cooked dishes too
There’re three types of soup to choose from: clear soup, tomyam, and ma-lak (嘛辣). We had our pot split between the ma-lak and clear soup.
To be honest, the ma-lak soup was a bit of a let down. The clear soup too was slightly bland, but nothing a bit of seafood (crab in this case) can’t fix. We didn’t try the tomyam soup, so I can’t commend on that.
beef slices, various condiments, desserts, ice cream
The selection of food here is as good as anywhere else at this price point. I particularly love the super big clams they have on that day (not sure if it’s an everyday thing), along with the cuttle fish, lala, prawns, bamboo clams, and more. They are constantly being refilled too, which is always a plus.
Other than seafood you do get the usual suspects: plenty of fish ball lookalike and taste-alike stuff, big selection of vegetables, mushrooms, noodles, egg, and sliced beef.
There are also a buffet line of pre-cooked dishes such as fried noodle, curry chicken, hot and sour soup, sausages, tea leaf eggs and more so you can start stuffing your mouth from the get-go, before the steamboat is boiled.
our stomach was completely stuffed, was a great lunch for sure
As for desserts, the choices aren’t great. There’s ice cream, kuai leng gou, fruits, and a few other Chinese/Taiwanese jelly thingy. Then again, who has stomach for desserts when you go for steamboat?
Overall it’s a pretty decent place to go, pretty good value for what you have to pay, and I think we’ll be back again for some long lunches in the future.
The funny thing about foodie is that we often go on a long journey to sample something that we heard is good, but at the same time ignores the more famous eateries that are much closer to us. One of such places that I’ve managed to ignore for the past 7 years or so is the steamboat place Yat Yeh Heng,
Yat Yeh Heng is what steamboat is all about this part of Klang Valley, way before the rise in prominence of the various “pulau ketam” steamboat places, buffet style steamboats like Yuen, or the slightly more luxurious style like Damansara Village steamboat.
awesome chicken wings, and pretty good fried lala
The only reason Yat Yeh Heng eluded me all these while was the simple fact that the restaurant is located too near from where I stay.
Anyway, not too long ago we finally found ourselves at the area looking for something to eat, and decided to finally give this place a try. Alongside with 4 portions of standard steamboat set, we also ordered extra serving of fish meat, a plate of kam heong fried lala, and their famous fried chicken wings.
old school ingredients, awesome steamboat
Service wasn’t the fastest when there wasn’t even very packed there, but Yat Yeh Heng does redeem itself as soon as the lala and chicken wings arrived at the table. They were delicious!
The lala is comparable to the one at Alisan, and the chicken wings were simply superb, it must be one of the best I’ve had.
As for the steamboat, the soup were good, and ingredients pretty fresh as well. Together with the chili paste plus fried shallots (I always love to mix them), it is about as good as any steamboat places, except you won’t fret over finding a place to park at Yat Yeh Heng. We had both tomyam and clear soup, and I’d suggest you to start with clear soup before tomyam lest you want to not taste the former.
Together with drinks, the total bill came up to RM 133 for 7 of us, slightly less than RM 20 per pax. Satisfying dinner indeed, steamboat doesn’t need to always be in buffet format.
Address: 33, Jalan SS 4D/2,
People’s Park,
47301 Petaling Jaya GPS:3.112802, 101.599245 Tel:012-629 4807
Remember the previous post about the mysterious sign? I also posted a video on facebook, the same one like below:
Apparently these “signs” are appearing everywhere, and there’s already a guy hot on it’s trail. Check out this dedicated blog – Lambang Misteri. I’ve also seen the same signs at a few places in KL while at work.
A document related to this phenomena were recently uncovered and there appears to be a link – kolony.com.my. The mystery is soon to be revealed, I believe, but the link isn’t working for me at this time.. ermm…
Steamboat has always been one of my favorite type of Chinese food. There are mainly two types of steamboat places around, ala carte/set, and buffet style. While some swear by the buffet places such as Yuen at Sunway, I actually prefer the former version more. I find it usually a lot less stressful, and you don’t ever get the feeling of having to try to gorge yourself just to squeeze a bigger bang for the bucks.
Xin Chun Steamboat – Pulau Ketam style
A couple weeks ago I joined the guys at a simple dinner at Xin Chun Seafood Steamboat Restaurant at Kota Damansara. The place was pretty busy when we got there, the tables inside the restaurant were all filled up, and there are even tents set next to it shop filled with even more diners.
a glorious pot of steamboat
Since we aren’t exactly teenagers in puberty anymore, only three single set of steamboat is ordered (RM 13.50 per set). The set comes with prawns, dumpling, fish meat, pork ball, fishball, tofu skin, corn & carrot (to sweeten the soup), vegetable, egg, noodle, and a few of those other fishball lookalike thingy.
dumpling, steamboat set, condiment, pork slice
For good measures, we also ordered a plate of sliced pork and dumpling.
The most important ingredient at these Pulau Ketam style steamboat places is the sambal, and it doesn’t disappoint at Xin Chun. The sambal’s spicy and flavorful, if you like a bit of complexity, add the fried shallots in it.
While the soup isn’t as great as the one with herbs at Damansara Village (extra charge of course), it holds up on its own pretty well. The ingredients were good though, I particularly like the sliced pork and their very yummy dumplings.
Other dishes available at Xin Chun includes crab meehun, lala meehun, deep fried fish head, steamed clams and so forth, perhaps we should try those too next time.
With drinks, our dinner came up to less around RM 15 per person, simple, satisfying, and pretty economical. No wonder there’s the big crowd.
Address:
Xin Chun Seafood Steamboat
No 15, Jln PJU 5/3,
Dataran Sunway, Kota Damansara,
47810 Petaling Jaya, Selangor
GPS: 3.15188, 101.59548
Tel: 012-544 5582
