Ju Ju Hokkaido Hot Pot

All the animals gathered at 聚聚 北海道 昆布锅 last Friday to welcome a new member who officially became Mrs. Rooster on 13 Nov 07.

We were in our best behavior at the beginning, not wanting to scare our new friend away but the little monkey in us couldn’t stay still for long and we were back to our nonsense again.

Ju Ju Hokkaido Hot Pot, a restaurant with so much to praise and also condemn about. I suggested the place cos I’ve never been there and it sounds like a good place to 聚聚.

When I called the restaurant to make reservation for 6 to 7 people, the nice lady over the phone was so thoughtful, suggesting that I take the table of 6 so that we can share food and conversation instead of splitting up to several tables and reiterating that the 7th person will have to share the individual pot with another person.

When we arrived, the same lady approached me and asked if the arrangement was ok and explained the menu, how we can mix and match to enjoy more variety of food. She also suggested that the 3 of us who arrived early to have the starter while waiting for the rest.

She explained each portion of our starter and how we should savor it. At this point, the 3 mountain tortoises were impressed by the service, presentation and taste of the food.

The rest of the animals came. A waiter patiently explained the menu item by item to the whole bunch of overly excited adults who can’t put our minds to read the simple menu properly.

The 7 course dinner menu consists of:
1. Starter
2. Main, choice of either Seafood, Pork, Fish, Chicken, Mutton, Beef or Vegetable
3. Choice of Rice, Vermicelli, Soba
4. Sour plum juice
5. Dumpling set (dinner only)
6. Dessert, choice of either Green Tea Pudding, Vanilla ice-cream, Coffee ice-cream, Yam with Bubur Pulut Hitam (black glutinous rice) or Pearl Harbor (essentially mango, apples, sago, etc)
7. Soup, choice of either Clear or Spicy

Pig and I opted for the spicy soup hot pot while the rest took the non spicy clear soup hot pot. The waiter assured us that we can change our hot pot if we find it too spicy or even add on if it’s not spicy enough.

We were so carried away by the display of glorious food and were busy dumping things into our pot and fishing them out to eat.

All the excitement died when pig signaled us to witness a horrible sight… she has a tiny piece of chipped glass in her mouth… minus the blood.

We alerted one of the waitresses and she immediately ‘confiscated’ the evidence and told us to wait. Suddenly dog barked, we didn’t take a picture of it! Damn.

While waiting for something to happen, we realized that most of the glass ware had either chipped or cracked. It is unhygienic and unprofessional of them to continue serving food using them.

The lady who attended to us early came and apologized. She has never encountered such an accident in her 3 years of service and was willing to do anything to appease the pig. She also gave us a 10% discount and an additional set of desserts. Hmm… how sincere.

Pig’s hot pot was changed and she asked for another set of pork. I have lost my appetite.

A point to note, almost all the crew are Chinese nationals. Hmm… is Hokkaido in China?

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After dinner, the not so young but young at heart animals (minus the homely rabbit), crossed the road to chill out at absolute haven (blog).

This modern European cuisine fine dining restaurant is definitely an ideal place to unwind, relax and chit chat but it’s rather weird that they closed at 11pm (website states 10pm), even on a Friday.

We ordered Buffalo wings to go with beer. The wings were a disappointment. They were not freshly fried and too salty for my palette.

P/S: Pig and Rabbit, be more active to recruit members can?

Ju Ju is here...








Chili, Peanut & Soy sauce



Starter

The egg is 70% cooked.

Spicy hot pot

A set of dumplings each (dinner only)

Seafood


Fish


Pork

Beef

Chicken

Soba

Vermicelli



Sour plum juice

Chipped & cracked glass


Additonal pork for pig

Desserts

Additional desserts... all for pig