KY eats – Szechuan steamboat at Restaurant Hong La Qiao (红辣椒)
Last weekend a few of us decided to have some spicy food and went to this Hong La Qiao (红辣椒 – literally Red Chili) at the heart of KL for their unique Szechuan steamboat. Knowing that the place is usually packed during weekends, we called ahead to book for a table. Do note that it is advisable to get someone who can speak in Mandarin to make the booking, since the receptionist doesn’t really speak in English.
*slurps*
The restaurant, situated just right behind Berjaya Times Square, serves rice dishes as well as steamboat. We ordered the “ying yang” steamboat with the spicy Szechuan soup as well as the clear soup, and a bunch of steamboat dishes to chuck in there. There were fishball with meat stuffing, dumplings, beef, fish maw, dried pork skin, tofu, crab stick, fish fillet, a few types of vegetables, mushroom, sea cucumber, and more.. all in all more than 10 dishes.
the spicy szechuan and the clear soup
The other must-order item at this restaurant is their unique cold cucumber dish. Basically cucumber sliced to bite size sticks, covered with oil, salt, seasonings, and very finely chopped garlic. The ingredients might look simple and even odd, but it proved to be a very refreshing and interesting “snack”. We eventually ordered 2 plates for the 4 of us. The other non-steamboat item we ordered was the gyoza, though pretty decent, it wasn’t as good as the one served up at Crystal Jade.
the interesting pickled tofu sauce with crab stick
The steamboat though, was rather nice… if you are one of those guys who enjoy spicy food. The spicy Szechuan soup tasted very hot and even numbing. The top layer of red oil was especially powerful in attacking the heat receptor. However, cooking fish and meat in the hot soup, and then dipping them in their unique picked tofu (腐乳) or fermented bean paste sauce proved very addictive.
Hong La Qiao is just behind Berjaya Time Square
The taste was pretty unique and rather good, though a little on the spicy side, a great place for that exotic yet very Chinese food. Since we ordered up a boat load of food, it came to about RM 40 for each of us, but a normal serving of steamboat should be around RM 30.
Address:
No. 53,55, Jalan Cangkat Thambi Dollah,
Off Jalan Pudu, 55100, KL
GPS: 3.140666, 101.710321
Tel: 03-2141-8078