JPot

For full reviews of Jpot, and other food scribblings please visit my little scribble site Screaming Gastrogasms (www.eberdz.weebly.com)

My favourite steamboat place in Singapore so far has got to be Jpot at Vivocity; Jumbo Seafood's steamboat outpost. It's a huge sprawling space, and you can have your choice of personal pot or communal pot. The stocks are  all fresh tasting and delicious.

What I like the most is the sheer neatness about everything; at each seat is a holder for a set of tongs, a ladle, and chopsticks and spoon. Each person has their own thermostat to adjust the temperature of their personal pot. Each person gets a bowl to personalize their sauces.

The ingredients are individually priced; and I feel the price is not cutthroat, in fact the portions were larger than expected; and you get the normal steamboat items, selection of dim sum, and of course fresh seafood too, since its Jumbo. When the ingredients come, they're all artfully and tastefully arranged into baskets or conical little receptacles. It's all so neat and appetizing.

The freshness of the ingredients is without question. The service is very prompt and attentive, even when it's crowded. You always have a great steamboat experience there, no matter whether you just want the normal steamboat things, or some premium seafood, like live fish, prawns or scallops to throw in together with your pork balls and enoki shrooms.

2 things in particular : the enoki here is simply WONDERFUL. It's very very fresh and sweet, and crunchy. I can't get it to taste like that in homemade steamboat! And the Kang Kong: look how beautifully arranged it is? And I love that the vegetables here are always young, and tender, and the stems and leaves are unmarred with holes or tears.

There are a selection as many as 7 soup base here and each of us get to choose our preferred soup base, no need to share, super hygienic! And what's more, they have unique soup base like laska and silky porridge? I wonder what's silky porridge base is.

And oh, they are using electric thermal stove, so you wont feel the heat of the flame directed at you. Thumbs up!

Sauce wise, you can create your own with the assortment. I sort of put a bit of everything together, and surprisingly it was quite good! My personal tip, fried garlic is a must! But if you are totally clueless how to mix your own sauce, you can follow their "recipe" as well. =)

Food variety is pretty good, ranging from meats to seafood to vegetable, as well as cooked stuff. To see more, you can refer to their menu online. 

Overall, I think this will definitely be my choice if I feel like eating steamboat. Food wise, it actually dun diff much from other steamboat places, but in term of the environment wise, it definitely scores a better grade.





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My friend is a fan of JPot and has been trying to get us there for dinner. Most of the time, the place is full and each time, we were told that the waiting time could be up to 45mins. Finally, we went after making reservation about a week earlier.

Everyone had their own individual pot. I had tasted the JPot premium, fish and herbal soups. Personally, I love how the Herbal soup base tasted like. I can't stop myself from drinking. I also like how the meat was sliced so thinly! Everything was fresh and definitely enhance the dining experience. There is an option of paying for free-flow drinks. The only negative thing is that one of the service crew was showing black face but i guess that is just one of her off days.

At the sauce counter, you could mix and match the sauces of your choice. I like the idea of 'revealing' some recipes that customers may like. But they could make the recipe clearer.

For more photos and reviews, visit my blog at ms-skinnyfat.blogspot.com

There is only 1 way to have steamboat and that is in the comfort of an air-conditioned restaurant, with fresh seafood and quality meat, attentive servers and ala carte style. My favorite place? JPot.

Any meal with the Stupidgirl is bound to end up with us over-ordering and then over-eating. She insisted on having the dinner set (we chose Set B $78++ for 2 person) because she wanted the seafood platter (live prawns, sliced red grouper, cuttlefish, scallops, hand made prawn and fish balls, har gau and siew mai) which costs $32 on its own. The set is kinda what you see in the above picture and comes with 2 different meat items. We went with Beef Short Rib and Marinated Pork (both my favorites). There's also a choice of deep fried specialty (fried beancurd skin/fried fish skin), a vegetable platter and noodles/rice together with our choice of broth (the Jpot superior broth is the best!) Sounds like a lot already? Indeed! But that didn't stop her from ordering MORE! 

Really tender and well marinated pork. I would pick this over the chicken or beef. A small quail egg is provided and i would crack it over the pork before throwing the meat into the soup.



Our Seafood & Dim sum platter. Only the freshest ingredients from the Jumbo people who know their seafood. I'm so glad they kinda killed the prawns before serving to us. IT served us jumping prawns on skewers. So torturous to watch them and then kill them ourselves. Really sweet and crunchy fresh prawns. Great scallops. Everything was just so perfect. 

Beef Short Rib, thinly sliced, cooked Shabu-shabu style. Just look at the marvelous marbling on the meat. Perfect mix of fat and meat. Good thing Stupidgirl doesn't take beef so i had the entire plate to myself!

Side order of Jumbo Pork Ball, freshly made and mixed with herbs like chinese parsley (yucks) but somehow it tasted pretty good after boiling in the broth. You can make many little pork balls from the mother of all pork balls.

Side order of Fish noodle. This is a novelty i guess but it's not fantastic. I find the 'noodle' too fluffy and airy and you don't taste much of the paste. It's kinda like eating marshmallow.

Other than these, we also ordered fish maw, sliced Kurobuta pork and tau pok. Madness.

And this has got to be the reason why i love JPOT and IT so much- fried beancurd skin. We first had it at IT and the restaurant manager taught us how to eat it the right way (i think it's a shanghainese thing?)



In short, fresh food, excellent broth, comfortable environment. What else could you ask for in a hot pot right? A little on the pricey side but they have lunch deals which can be pretty economical. You get a 10% discount with a Jumbo membership card.

 

Please go to  http://rollingwrites.blogspot.com/2012/01/jpot.html for pictures. 

JPot is a relatively new restaurant, set up in 2009. Its focus is to use Singapore-style hotpot soup bases. These soup base include JPot Superior Broth, Bak Kut Teh, Herbal, Laksa, Silky Porridge, Tom Yum or Vegetarian.

We ordered Set D ($98++) for 4 persons. Note that they only serve the more expensive sets for dinner, public holidays and weekends, during lunch time. So, if you intend to save some money, opt for the lunch set on other occasions other than those mentioned above.

Set D gives you a Seafood Jumbo Pork Ball Platter which includes prawns, scallop, gauropa, cuttlefish, fish noodle, pork ball, freshly sliced & marinated meat (we opted for marinated pork and chicken), deep-fried dim sum, (we chose the deep fried wanton), vegetables (spinach with enoki mushroom) and noodles or rice (we took laksa noodle and vermicelli).

$30 (around there) for steamboat is frankly quite expensive. But this is in exchange for quality and novelty. Quality in the sense that the food is very fresh. The scallop, prawns etc were screaming of freshness. Freshness is really not a given at steamboat places. Novelty in the sense that you get this fish noodle thing where you squeeze it out like piping icing on cakes, and also where they give you a giant meatball and you have to slice it using a wooden apparatus.

It's not your typical hotpot where you have fire at the bottom of the pot. This is by induction cooking- how cool's that. The tom yam soup base was exactly how it's supposed to be- spicy and sour. Perfectly appetizing.

You also have an a choice of sauces where they give you instructions on how to make your perfect dip for the steamboat. I didn't try it simply because 1) I was too lazy to get to the station and 2) I thought the tom yam soup's flavour was strong enough.

The hotpot was quite filling for me and as I mentioned above, the freshness of the food is something that you are paying for. Plus, if you are a stickler for hygiene, getting your individual hotpots while sharing the raw ingredients, may be a good alternative to the anything-goes shared steamboat.

Tip: 20% off from 930 pm onwards! You might also want to consider getting a Jumbo Rewards card (we did) if you intend to eat at more Jumbo restaurants!

I am a steamboat lover! Somehow the pot of boiling broth and cooking stuff in it makes me comforted. I digress... My friends around me have been raving and being a steamboat fan, how could I miss trying? 

We were lucky this round to get a seat by walking in. The manager explained that we were taking the seat that had a 8.30pm reservation. She asked if we could finish by then. Well there was 1.5hr, so why not? 

Ambience & Service

The special thing about this place is the ambience. It's really cosy and welcoming. Other than the usual seats, we noticed "stall seats" and "circle seats" and alfresco seats (the sea separating us and Sentosa is some distance away). 

I would give about 8/10 for the service since waitresses could be found easily. Waitresses were friendly. Hb was quite impressed that the waitress noticed our soup was drying up and asked if we needed a top up. We also did not wait long for us to get our order and extra order. 

TIP: If you do not want to leave it to chance to get a seat, a reservation is surely the way to go.

 

Food standards & servings

SAUCE - Not sure who started this mix your own "sauce" concept. JPot has 2 island tables featuring bowls of sauce and condiments for diners to DIY. The array is mind-boggling for a first timer (which is my hb). If I did not miss out any, there is shredded leek, fresh garlic (yums!), fried garlic, chilli oil, vinegar, sesame seeds, sesame oil, sesame peanut sauce, soy sauce and chilli padi. Adventurous first timers can mix one based on what you like. If not, fret not, there is a recipe stand with directions of what you can mix together and how much to add. 

Food Servings - We ordered Set A ($58++, see picture which did not include a photo of the portion of spinach and enoki), a young coconut (special priced drink for Wednesday) and the JPot Meatball (the HUGE one). When the set came, we thought "Not a lot hor?". Midway through, we ordered the meatball. Conclusion: Without the meatball should be just nice. 

Food Standards - The soups came in individual pots (good if you do not like to share the soup). We chose JPot Superior Broth and Tom Yum. Hb loved the clear soup which tasted good at the end. The Tom Yum was nice (not too sour or spicy) but it got too salty at the end for my liking. 

Essentially, all the ingredients were very fresh (from seafood to meat to vegetable). Well it's something I'll expect for the $ we were forking out. Personally, I didn't like the "fish paste noodles" which is their special because it was a tad fishy to my liking (note I am a fish lover). 

If you are ordering marinated pork and chicken (really good!), the quail eggs are not for deco but for mixing into meat. We did not realise that purpose of the eggs until the waitress clearing our empty plates asked if we wanted the eggs. (Note: Impressed that she apologised for not informing us abt the use of the eggs). I used one on the Meatball and it tasted better!

Value - Well, this is the only thing I have something against. This is one of the pricer steamboat but the saving grace is the ambience, fresh ingredients, nice broth and attentive service. If not for the price, it will surely be a place I will visit very often for dinners with friends and family. 





PS:There are no credit card discounts when I went. But they said there are discounts for JUMBO members. So remember to bring the JUMBO membership card along if you have one! :) There is also a after 9pm discount (30% if I am not wrong. That is if you can have that late a dinner).

My friend and I went to J Pot. I like the setting and the condiments table. Food is a bit on the expensive side but generally good quality.  

 

We ordered a set menu but with individual broths as my friend cannot eat spicy food.

 

I had tom yam soup and she had a rather bland bah kut teh. We shared all other ingredients.

 

The sad part was that I woke up the following morning with red hives on my thighs and FACE as well as diarrhea! I immediately went to the doctor and he said that it was so severe that I needed an antihistamine injection (quite painful!) AND oral anti-histamines!

Until now, I do not know what caused this allergic reaction. My friend had no problems at all... I think that it must have been something in the tom yam soup. Sadly, this means that I have to avoid J Pot in the future.

Tried the herbal soup, I think it is the best in my opinion. It doesn't have the strong herbal taste and most of my friends like it too.

I am not a fan of fishballs but their fishballs are really nice.

It can be a little pricey if you go for many seafood items. Hence, do watch what you order.

our selection:

JPot superior broth

Tom Yum

Set A for 2 pax

fried fish skin

handmade Jumbo pork ball

set A consist of seafood selection such as prawns, scallops, sliced fish, squid and handmade fish noodle (signature).   as for meat, we can choose 2, marinated chicken and pork loin is our selection.  pork loin is good, no fats and thinly sliced, fresh. a basket of spinach and golden mushroom.   we are allow to choose 1 carbohydrate items, glass noodle our selection.  the portion quite big enough for 2 pax.  all the food is fresh with good quality.  the handmade noodle is a must try.

For more reviews and pictures: http://themunchingirl.wordpress.com/2011/04/13/jpot-best-ala-carte-steamboat/

Visited Jpot for lunch with my friend for the first time. We had the $38++ set which came with pork loin, chicken, fish noodle, giant meatball, 4 prawns, scallops, clams, enoki mushroom and veg ( can't remember if there was anything else). We also added kurobuta pork, beef ribeye (the cheapest ribeye on the menu i think) and topped up $3.50 for a soft drink and a dessert.

We tried the tomyum soup (pleasant but normal) and the bak kut teh soup (not spicy or garlicky enough). The seafood was pretty fresh. I liked the scallops but the clams shrank to nothing after being cooked. Though I'm usually a beef lover, I found both the pork was better although my friend preferred the beef. Somehow the beef wasn't as succulent as I would have liked. People seem to like the fish noodle but it was the first time I had it and I didn't like it at all. It was neither springy like fishcake nor like fish. It was kind of soft / tender which I found weird haha. We both had the luohan longan drink which was good and he had the bubor hitam which was normal while my almond flavoured tau huay was quite mild-tasting but pleasant.

I initially found the sauce station horrifying. The thought of the bizarre conbinations was rather disturbing although my friend assured me that that was exactly how he felt the first time he saw it but whatever combinations u come up with, it seems to taste fine. So I bravely put together some condiments that seem to "match" and it was fine haha.

Total bill was about 75 but not sure if that was before or after the 10% citibank discount. This place is certainly not cheap but it's well-lit, open, with decent service although all the servers only seem to speak mandarin. Compared to the generally horrible ambience at cheaper buffet style steamboat places, this was a delightful, well-paced luxury.