Steamboat is best eaten on rainy days with family or with lots of people and when you're feeling sickly and pathetic. The day we had steamboat at Lin Yuan's was one of those sickly, pathetic days where my family (and LC) willingly had steamboat with me.
Lin Yuan Pumpkin Garden Steamboat Kitchen (a mouthful!) specializes in pumpkin porridge steamboat where you cook steamboat items in gruel-consistency, pumpkin-laced porridge. They charge per portion/per pax and you're allowed to have up to 2 choices of soup base or porridge base.
We ordered 3 portions of steamboat and some add-ons of yam sticks, a mixture of pork balls and tendon balls and pork slices.
We also ordered a portion of Fried Lala Mee Hoon and Fried Loh Shi Fun.
We had 2 soup bases - pumpkin porridge and chicken soup.
The steamboat portion for 3 pax had everything in 3s, quite literally which I found quite inadequate for the 5 people at the table. We should have ordered for 5 pax.
There were also 2 eggs and 2 portions of Yee Mee and Meehoon.
An egg is added to the porridge base to create a thicker consistency.
Throughout the dinner, the waiters and the manager were very attentive to our needs. You could hear the manager telling waiters which tables' soup pots were boiling and ready for which steamboat items - that was quite impressive.
The Pork slices (RM18) were very nice, shabu-shabu quality with no pork smell. The yam sticks were nice with the soup too.
I didn't try the tendon balls or pork balls but there were only 6-8 pieces for the price of RM12 ouch.
The Fried Lala Meehoon was well done but the portion was very small. It looked like it could only feed 1 and a 1/2 person.
The Fried Loh Shi Fun smelled very good when it arrived at the table and tasted really good as well. I was surprised that their noodle dishes were good.
For the price you pay per person, the steamboat is worth it if everyone gets their own set because there really isn't much to go around if you order less portions compared to the number of people at the table. The pumpkin porridge is nothing to shout about - I didn't like the gruel like consistency and my mum makes much better pumpkin porridge. The chicken soup was alright.
I have yet to find a real good steamboat place, does anyone have recommendations? :(