Mo Mei Juk

You're probably wondering what the hell my header means. Well, its my pathetic attempt to give a phonetic translation of the name of the restaurant I went to last night.

You see, I've been in Guangzhou for a couple of days and in fact, only returned to Hong Kong today - hence the delayed post. While I was there, my host (and chauffeur) for the evening took me to a restaurant called 母米粥. Unfortunately, I have no idea what the English name of that restaurant is but Mo Mei Juk is how the characters sound in Cantonese (and as you know, GZ is in the Canton province).

The place is a hotpot restaurant. If you have never had hotpot, then you are really missing out on one of lifes pleasures. Basically, a hotpot is just that. You get a pot which is hot - and filled with hot soup. That pot is placed on a stove in the middle of the table so that the soup is kept at boiling point. Then you order various meats and vegetables which you cook in the soup and then eat. By the end of the meal, the soup has become really tasty due to all the nutrients from the various food which was cooked in it. In fact, the soup is so nutrient rich that you can't drink too much of it as your body can't take that much nutrition in one go!

In a hotpot restaurant, two things are critical. The food has to be fresh. This is of utmost importance as due to the method of cooking, you won't be adding much flavoring to the food which means that you need the food to have its own flavor which can only occur if the food is fresh.

The second critical component is obviously the soup base. The food will pick up some flavor from the soup base as you cook it and you would also drink some of the soup as well. Clearly, if the soup doesn't taste nice, this removes a lot of the point in the hotpot.

What makes 母米粥 special is that instead of your normal soup base, the restaurant uses congee as the soup base. Quite an interesting choice and one which I've never seen in HK before so I was very eager to give the place a try.

The place itself is apparently a really popular restaurant in GZ especially during the winter months. I was told that during the winter months, there would be huge queues of people waiting to get into the restaurant (as you can imagine, a nice hotpot is just what the doctor ordered if the weather is cold!).

Having been there, I can say that I enjoyed myself. The food was fresh and the congee makes a very nice alternative to your normal soup base. Having said that, I would really love to go back during the winter months when the weather is cold. I can imagine all that lovely hot congee warming my big fat belly! Delish!
:)

Definite thumbs up and definitely worth giving it a try if you have never been before.