As we know, to truly savour a
steamboat meal it would easily takes a lengthy time of between 1.5 hours to 3
or even sometimes 4 hours. It is ever possible to eat a steamboat meal in less
than 30 minutes.
Taiwan had been the epicentre of
Chinese fast food fads and now you can enjoy a sumptuous steamboat meal in less
than 30 minutes. We, Malaysian are very fortunate to get to experience new food
and dining experience thru the daring entrepreneurship of many, to bring in
specialties food to Malaysia.
We were indeed delighted when we were
invited for a food review session at the newly opened Two Pesos @SS2 Mini
Steamboat Restaurant located at 7, Jalan SS2/67, Petaling Jaya, which was
opened on 25th August 2014
This restaurant offers mini steamboat
set in a personal cast iron, or ceramic pot all ready to be eaten within
minutes. Some takes less than 5 minutes to cook while others up to 10 minutes. You
can literally have a complete meal in less than 30 minutes. Isn’t that fast for
a steamboat meal.
The restaurant is designed as a fast
food style with vibrant décor and colour theme. It is very brightly lit and
provides a nice atmosphere for you to enjoy this mini steamboat without the
rather hearty, sweating at most steamboat restaurant that we are familiar with.
The concept for Two Pesos @ SS2 is Fast,
Affordable, Nutritious Steamboat offering a wide variety of soup base served in
a uniquely designed pot.
The ordering process is a self service i.e. upon entering the restaurant;
- Pick up a washable menu from the counter and a
crayon pencil.
- Head to your table, use the crayon to choose the Steamboat
set that you want.
- Mark the type of meat you want.
- Mark whether you want Rice, Mee Hoon or Yee Mee and
hand over to the waiter/counter.
Two Pesos have gone thru many trials
on the best way to enjoy mini steamboat, it boils down to the use of the right
type of pots for different cooking style with each of the soup base. The right
type i.e. ceramic or iron cast, closed lid and etc can make the real difference
as was experienced by us.
Most steamboat restaurant offer very
limited soup base, but here at Two Pesos @SS2, there are altogether 12 different
sets of mini steamboat offered, of which we gotten to try only 5 pot namely (based
on my preference) which is
Two Pesos Stone Pot – ours is served
with pork slice – the pork slices are firstly fried in the pot together with
garlic, onion, spring onion and sesame oil. During the frying, the strong aroma of the sesame oil was
very enticing. The staff will do this for you to ensure that it is cooked to a
specific level. You will need to cook it in the pot later.
After frying, the pork meat are removed and the chicken broth are poured in
it to be boiled up, which is then followed by your preference of either the
vegetables or other ingredients to be steamboat and don't forget your juicy fried pork slice.
This soup base is best eaten with Yee Mee.
The next pot of goodness was the Tajine Seafood Pot. This is a very unique
ceramic pot, which is also called the Moroccan Pot, which has a natural way to
cook the food thru the vaporisation process.
All the vegetables and seafood are arranged in the pot, the pot is then cooked
at high temperature. It uses very little soup in. As the soup boils and due to the conceal
nature of the lid (the vaporisation process takes place here), water are thus
extracted from the natural ingredient like the vegetable and seafood i.e prawns
and lala. This extracts are blended into the soup base to increase the volume
of the soup.
Once it is boiled, as you can see from the water overflowing out from the
side of the lid, which should be around 5 to 6 minutes, you turn the fire to
medium and boil another 3 minutes and viola, the whole pot of goodness, which
had a very strong seafood especially the lala aroma (the minute you open the lid)
is ready to be eaten. You can really taste the natural flavours of each of the ingredient. This is
best eaten with rice or Bee Hoon.
My third choice was the Japanese Sukiyaki pot. It was served with a covered
iron cast pot with a lid. The pot comes with the Sukiyaki soup and all the ingredients are already
pre-arranged into the pot.
Fire up the stove, and cover the lid. About 5
minutes later you can enjoy all the wholesome goodness of the ingredient all
cooked up with the natural extract into the Sukiyaki soup.
I was surprised as the Sukiyaki soup was not too sweet and just the right
flavour for me. I am not a real fan of Sukiyaki. For those who want a lighter
version of the soup, you can add in the additional broth to dilute it further. This
soup is best eaten with rice.
Fourth pot was the Basu Spicy Pot – this is one pot for those who love to
have a spicy version for their steamboat. Basu actually was the old name for
Sze Chuan. So, this is actually, a Sze Chuan soup, which explains the extra
zing in the soup. The soup is served in a special brass like pot.
The spiciness of the soup comes from the use of the special hot peppercorn
that has a very pungent after taste which lingers around your throat for
sometime after you have eaten it.
This soup base will go well with the Bee Hoon as the Bee Hoon can really
absorb the soup into the Bee Hoon.
The last Steamboat pot, we had was the Milky Seafood Pot – we understand
that the milk used was imported from Germany and henceforth it has a special
milky flavours and have a light cheesy taste.
It is quite mild and compare to your normal Fish Head Noodle, it does not
have the strong oomph of the evaporated milk taste.
You can only enjoy this broth towards the end, and just like the Basu Spicy,
Bee Hoon is the preferred choice.
By the way, there are free soup refill, so if you need more soup like me,
you can get your refill from the counter – self service.
There are 3 type of sauce served in
Two Pesos, which you can mix it based on one’s personal preference i.e. chilli
sauce, bean paste and sacha sauce.
The bean paste sauce
and sacha sauce (taste a little like
the Bonito fish paste) are imported from Taiwan. I tried mixing all the type of sauce with
different proportion, it was indeed very delicious and a perfect match. For
those that love to have a little more spiciness, you can add more chilli sauce
to your blend.
For those, who do not have the time to savour the steamboat at the restaurant, or need to pack back for loved ones, there is a counter at the main door, where you can order the take-away.
The takeaway are nicely pack into this takeaway cup, where you can just i.e. pre-heat the soup and enjoy your delicious one-pot wonder.
Overall, it has been a real new experience to try so many variations of
steamboat without over burdening with too much food. It is really a simple, healthy,
hygienic (if you don’t enjoy eating steamboat with a big pot) and fast (can
finish your meal in 20 to 30 minutes), so you can literally have steamboat for
a quick lunch or if you are rushing for time.
We got little curios, how a Taiwanese
Steamboat ended up using Two Pesos (sounded more like a Philippines Restaurant)
as the shop name. Ironically the husband and wife team chanced upon a coin
which was kept after their visit to Boracay, Philippines and it was a 2 pesos coin.
So, it explains this little mystery.
