Sunday, February 05, 2006

Shancheng HotPot King

Shancheng HotPot King is not an easy place to find. To get to the restaurant you enter via a little door in Sussex St and then walk down to the end of the corridor before you are greeted with a big neon sign with Chinese writing. I discovered this place whilst dining with friends 4 years ago and have been a regular visitor ever since.

The service here is pretty bad. We always get a little put off by the staff standing around and staring at us whilst we eat (although this could be their way of offering good service, because the same thing happened when we ate at restaurants in China). We also found that they had a tendency to keep speaking mandarin to us even when we replied using Cantonese or English; this lead to a lot of miscommunication.

Having said that, the food here is good and the price is very reasonable. Everyone comes for the Hotpot but you can also order noodles and small Asian entrée dishes (like marinated spicy chicken or vegetables).

To explain how this restaurant works, you are given a checklist when you sit down. From there you select the soup bases that you would like i.e. chicken, spicy, herbal chicken etc (you can have up to 2 soups). You then go through the rest of the list selecting the items of food for the hot pot. Items on offer include: fish balls, octopus balls, sliced beef, fish pieces, different types of mushrooms, vegetables, pork and the list goes on.

This type of dining is not for everyone but is very popular amongst Chinese families. It would be a great place to eat for those who are not fussy about service and decor and is best suited to groups of 4 or more (so that you get more variety).

Left: We went with half spicy and half chicken for the soup base (this picture was taken before any dishes was put into the hop pot).
Right: I think that between 5 people we ordered around 20 dishes with prices ranging from $3 to $8 per dish.
Shancheng HotPot King
8a/363 Sussex St
Haymarket
Open 7 days 11:30am -12:00am
phone: 02 9267 6366

9 comments:

SoRMuiJAi said...

It would seem.....that you like to eat
;)
Are you working as a food critic for the newspaper in your spare time? hehe

PiCkLeS said...

Hahha not quite LiLs, I've always liked to eat (there use to be a joke in high school about it where they rephrased the saying 'eat like a horse' to 'eat like Emily'. I eat out so much that it seemed like a pity that I didn’t blog about it…now I do. I'm thinking that I should cut back a bit though because my metabolism isn't what it use to be.

DJ Ho said...

Are you competing with Augustus Gloop?

I saw Helen's comment recently, she must be proud/worried!

Student154 said...

It's awesome how you're turning this into a restaurant review page!

PiCkLeS said...

dj ho: you ask the strangest questions why on earth would i be competing with Helen??? food blogging is all about discovering new places to eat so that others can try it out too.

bosco: it's not really my intention i've just been eating out a lot lately because i'm on annual leave (actually last day today)

DJ Ho said...

relax, i was kidding!

Dianna said...

hehe, there are lots of chinese eateries that have really nice food but lack class hehe. Oh well, the food's most important i guess =D

lil_lamies said...

Hey Ho, what makes you a DJ? Are you competing against Common and Scratch?

PiCkLeS said...

haha well i guess you haven't met or eaten with my family before!