Hai Di Lao (海底捞火锅) vs Xian De Lai (鲜得来)

  

I normally don't like eating steamboat outside, cause it's always way cheaper to cook them at home. It isn't exactly the hardest thing to cook anyway, all you had to do was dump raw stuff into boiling soup. But for some reasons, lady friends like steamboat, probably because they think it's healthier? I don't know. But I ended up at Hai Di Lao at Clark Quay in one of the occasion, and this is one place I don't think I ever want to come back to.

  

Sure the soup was nice, sure the meat and ingredient was not too bad. But at almost SGD50 per person, it's way too expensive to my liking, especially since you're probably paying for a lot of extra you don't need: e.g. shoe shining while waiting for your seats to be available? Buffet of fruits and drinks while waiting for your seats to be available? Manicure while, you guess it, waiting for your seats to be available? And when you enter, they give you stuff like hairband for your hair, bags to cover your handbags, wipes for your glasses etc. I'm here to eat, not to do my makeover! And although interesting to see someone pull noodles for you whenever you order that, is it really necessary? I'm not paying for that! No thank you. But for what it's worth, the soup was really nice.

My favorite place to have steamboat is actually  Xian De Lai (鲜得来) at Liang Seah Street. I go there cause I love the Ma La Prawn. They have a wide variety of cooked and raw food you can order too. And its almost half the price of Hai Di Lao. The only thing that you may need to get use to is, most of the time not everything you order will be delivered to you. They kinda have this self regulating system that deliver just enough food to your table. But since it's a buffet, I'm not really bothered about it cause I leave only when I'm full. Besides, you can just remind them if you remember what you've ordered is not yet here yet. And the Chinese servers there are more genuine than the one in Xian De Lai as well. This is a much more down to earth place to eat. Been coming here for years now. And will continue to do so.   

Ref:
Hai Di Lao (海底捞火锅)
Xian De Lai (鲜得来)