Hokkaido Kelp Hot Pot 聚北海道昆布鍋

Still January and its cold, given the recent drop in temperature. Its a perfect time to dine in hot pot restaurant. Although there are many places to choose from in Hsinchu. We decided on Hokkaido kelp hot pot a Japanese shabu shabu branch in Hsinchu. Hokkaido Kelp Hot Pot is situated just infront of Sogo department store at the 5th floor of Far Easterone Telecom Company. The restaurant is a nice getaway from the hustle and bustle of the city. Its a great place to go to for a great ambience and a good selection of none eat all you can shabu shabu restuarant. They offer various shabu shabu sets, there are two packages together the price of a NT$330 fine tangle pot package, a package of Hokkaido is NT$530 most come standard with appetizer, main course, assorted vegetables, plum vinegar, non-staple food, broth with a piece of kelp, dessert, two kinds of dipping sauces are available.

Shabu shabu is a Japanese hotpot meal and very popular eating food for Taiwanese. Shabu shabu is a style of cooking in which each diner gets a pot of flavourful broth and proceeds to cook. Everyone at the table partakes in adding a variety of uncooked items like vegetables, thin sliced of meat, seafood, dumplings, fish/meat balls and noodles. Since most of the ingredients aren’t seasoned, additional flavor is added via the broth during cooking, as well as with dipping sauces after cooking.

We began with the appetizer loaded with tamago or egg, kimchi and mango-tomato compliments with fresh brewed tea and this include with our choice for the price NT$530 plus 10% service charged.

For the main course we had seafood platter, thinly slice of duck meat, and 2 order sliced of beef. The freshest of the seafood platter all served under the glow of ice.

The sliced of tender beef shoulder short ribs, nicely marbled beef but the few slices leave you very much wanting.

Thinly sliced of cherry duck meat and is not as tender or delicate in taste. These barely need to cook on boiling water. The meat is delicious and in surprisingly good quality, its silky and fatty they were.

The set comes with your choice of rice or noodles.

With every meat platter they also give a whole plate of veggies; mushrooms, baby corn, batchoy, cabbage, taro and some tofu. It was a lot of food.

The food kept coming and coming of these fish balls. From the looks of it, they all seems to be freshly made as they are not frozen.

Then we have some dessert even though our stomachs were telling us not to. We had the matcha black sesame tofu, awesome!

I personally enjoyed the osmanthus fine bean stew, its earthy and healthy with its delicate fragrance from natural aromas and osmanthus.

The orange panna cotta it was just an ordinary taste.

And so we were served and ended up with sliced of fruits.

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Overall; The service was on spot, our tea cup were always full of brewed tea, they always came by to check on us and clean our table. The bad news is, they don't offer any free drinks so you will feel disappointed. But the food are freshly made and decent and the decor it was nice, clean looking place it feels like you're at a bar and feeling comfortable with reasonable prices.

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Hokkaido Kelp Hot Pot-聚北海道昆布鍋
新竹市中正路2號5 樓
No.2-5th Floor, Zhongzheng Road. Hsinchu City
Contact No: (03) 526-0688
Website:
http://www.giguo.com.tw/