#445 过锅瘾 @ 武商黄石购物中心, 黄石
My first day in Huangshi was spent travelling from Singapore to Wuhan by plane and Wuhan to Huangshi by car. After which, I had to clear my emails and ate dinner at the hotel. On the second day of my trip there, I had to go to the office for training. It was quite a busy day going on a factory tour, training and clearing my emails at the same time. However, after work, two of my colleagues in China decided to bring me to the mall nearby to have dinner. Since they had a number of tasks to do after work, they told me to return to my hotel to leave my laptop there. After about half an hour, they told me that they are coming in a cab to pick me up.
武商黄石购物中心 / Wushang Huangshi Shopping Center
Before my trip to Huangshi, my colleague in Singapore has already printed me the map on the mall to head to at Huangshi. As Huangshi is a small city in the Southeastern Hubei province, there are not many malls at Huangshi as we see in bigger cities in China. The newest mall is Wushang Huangshi Shopping Center, which my colleague in Singapore recommended me to go when I am free. Since my colleagues in China wanted to bring me there, I finally had the chance to go there!
过锅瘾三汁焖全国连锁黄石武商店
武商黄石购物中心8楼
0714-3293029
Nickly gave me a number of choices to choose from and I decided on this restaurant as the hotpot concept here is a little different from the norm. We have the usual Chinese soup-based hotpot at Hai Di Lao, which is also popular in China, where the queues are so long and people are willing to line up. This restaurant is a little different though. Firstly, they will steam the seafood, vegetables and ingredients before putting in their special sauce. Then, they will steam it once again. After we have finish some of the food, they will add in the noodles and mix it with the sauce. We did not order so much as there were only three of us but if we did, they would have added water to continue the hotpot process. As the steaming takes a long time to cook the food, I was amazed that an iPad (first picture) is provided to for you to watch shows while waiting for the food to cook. It is to no surprise that you see one customer consuming food on her own while watching a movie using the iPad. China has developed in such a way that they even offer wifi, iPads, iMacs to be used in cafes and restaurants.
Overall, the seafood is very fresh and the sauce used on the ingredients tastes heavenly! Usually, my stomach is quite sensitive but I did not have any stomach upsets after this huge feast. I chose seafood instead of meat because I was actually on my forth day of post juice cleanse and it is better to consume seafood and delay the consumption of meat if you have to on a post juice cleanse. The person who was serving to us the food was a little weird though. She saw me snapping pictures of the food and questioned my motives of taking pictures. Nickly stated that I am her guest from Singapore, who is an enthusiast of food and love blogging about food. She stated that she prefer if I did not do so because she is only a worker there and through my pictures, people may know the recipe of the sauce from there. We found this so ridiculous but she wanted me to agree not to post online. Since I was in China and some people have a rigid thinking there, I just agreed but could not care less anyway. Google this restaurant online and you can see that this restaurant is even franchised in Taiwan so definitely there are people blogging about this restaurant and nobody can figure out how the sauce is made just by looking at the pictures. What a bummer! After we ate a little, she was asking us how the food was and I gave her my honest opinion that the food was good. However, she randomly talked about her son working at France when we did not even ask. Nickly, Betty and I just stared at each other and found it weird that she had to tell us about it. Well, we meet people from all walks of life everyday so no biggie.
Ambiance: 7/10
Service: 5.5/10
Food (taste & appearance): 7/10
Value: Nil (My partners in China treated me)
Total: 6.5/10★
Although we had an encounter with weird server who prohibited me from snapping shots of food and posting it online, the food was delicious and the experience was great.
