Visited Xiao Jun Gan for a late dinner/supper at 10pm and it was pretty crowded on a Friday night! There are issues parking around the Beach Road eateries as it’s quite hard to find a parking lot so we ended up parking at Shaw Tower and walking across the street.
Xiao Jun Gan offers hotpot buffets for $25.90++, and $27.90++ on Friday, and weekends. We went for the yuan yang double broth - and the server recommended their signature ma la broth with the clear soup. This was a great recommendation. I loved the fiery heat and tingling numbness of the ma la broth which was just right. Not as numbing as HDL’s but this one was actually possible to drink (somewhat)! I especially enjoyed dipping the you tiao lok lok and fried mini mantous into this broth as they soaked up the ma la goodness! The clear soup was a good complement to the ma la broth as it was light, but the flavours started to get more pronounced as it boiled longer and we had a super flavourful broth by the middle of our meal. The selection of ingredients is good too - from a variety of veggies, fishcakes and marinated meats on skewers, to the MLXG/YTF-esque style ingredients where you ‘kiap’ your own veg, meat, seafood, tofu and more. They have fish roe filled tofu and fishcake available- yay! What impressed me was the seafood selection of scallops, crabs, prawns, and they even had octopus too!!!!
While you’re waiting for your ingredients to cook (which admittedly doesn’t take long), there’s appetisers that you can opt for. There’s sour and spicy chilled silken tofu and dou Gan which tasted great! There’s also fried mini mantous and watermelon and pineapples. This section doesn’t get refilled so often unlike the hotpot ingredients though.
The seasoning section is not bad, not as comprehensive as HDL but I’m happy as long as there’s chilli, sesame paste and peanuts. There’s also apparently a can of special oil that they leave at your table which you can mix in with the condiments at an extra cost but we didn’t go for that this round.
Note that the pot is quite shallow so sometimes the ingredients on skewers don’t get fully submerged, especially when the soup has evaporated. But the staff are quite attentive and come refill the soups often.
An extra plus is that the boss is super friendly and attentive. He’s on the ground helping out the rest of the staff to clear plates, refill soup broths, checking if the diners need anything, etc. He also told us that the ma la broth is customisable so we can make it more or less spicy/numbing. They also have an ala carte MLXG available - which we might just come and try next time!
This is definitely a place I would return to, and it’s a great supper place that opens till 7am! Whoop!
