New soup base for steamboat

Story and Photos by YIP YOKE TENG

Side dishes of fried wantan and dumplings are available at the outlet.

A POPULAR main meal option among the Chinese, particularly when dining in a group, steamboat is touted to foster friendship. After all, the pot of soup in the centre brings everyone together while the time needed to bring the soup to boil and cook the ingredients encourages conversation.  

Andy Chuah and Ben Siow, co-owners of New Taste Steamboat Restaurant in Taman Billion, also credit steamboat for their close ties. They met only three years ago at their previous workplace but became very close friends, thanks to their mutual liking for steamboat.  

Having tried “almost all the steamboat outlets in Kuala Lumpur” and even checked out several overseas, the two agreed that they needed to introduce something distinctive when they decided to open their own steamboat restaurant. In the end, they decided to have bak kut teh as soup base.  

“My grandfather used to run a bak kut teh restaurant in Penang and we still had the recipe, so we thought, why not combine the two?” Siow said.  

“The original soup is really tasty but is too rich for steamboat, so we had to make some adjustments,” he added. 

Their endeavour to adapt the soup for steamboat is testament to their enthusiasm. They spent a good six months adapting the original recipe through trial and error, having bak kut teh steamboat every weekend in their quest to come up with the perfect soup. 

Finally, they were satisfied with a version that involved changing about 30% of the original recipe.  

The bak kut teh steamboat soup base is made by boiling pork bones for at least seven hours and flavouring it with 15 herbs and spices.  

Apart from the bak kut teh soup base, the restaurant also serves clear chicken soup and tom yam soup. The owners plan to introduce new soup bases periodically and the first in the pipeline is pepper soup.  

Chuah (left) and Siow became close friends thanks to their mutual liking for steamboat.

There will be at least 15 items to dunk into the soup. The items are sourced from different suppliers so that only the freshest is served.  

Yam is an item that is unique to the outlet, and is said to bring out the sweetness in the soup. 

“The soup base is very important in steamboat, as is the chilli sauce,” Siow pointed out, adding that the green and red chilli sauces are home-made. The green chilli sauce comes with cilantro for extra fragrance. 

For those who want something to munch on while waiting for the steamboat soup to boil, there are side dishes of fried wantan and dumplings with juicy fillings served with home-made mayonnaise.  

Until April 30, the outlet is having a promotion that offers the steamboat at RM9.90 per person.