New Tsim Sha Tsui restaurant The Drunken Pot serves hotpot with a Japanese twist
Tracey Furniss
This trendy new hot-pot venue in Tsim Sha Tsui is already a popular dining destination. The décor is colourful with contemporary Asian street art and chill-out music in the background. A spacious 6,200 sq ft, the designs are inspired by fish markets with live fish in a huge tank, a market vendor-style bar and fishing tales recounted in graffiti.
The Drunken Pot is a reinvention of the traditional Hong Kong favourite - hot pot. With sake bombs set to fire up the pot, hence the name The Drunken Pot, you can also go for a spicy chilli bomb. The food is Asian, including Japanese and Sichuan. We started with some delicious deep-fried spicy fish crackling and a large plate of sashimi which included salmon, prawns and scallops.
We also tried the six-colour xiao long bao (HK$78) - orange is crab, green is spinach, red is lobster and black is truffle, and deep-fried chicken wings with fermented bean curd (HK$48).
The Drunken Pot (HK$328) hot pot features five soup bases in one copper pot: papaya with shrimps is heated with soup, before sake is added and flamed for a touch of drama. There is also seafood soup, squid ink seafood soup, Sichuan-style soup and Chiu Chow-style satay soup. You can choose from an array of food items to cook. We went for seafood and meat, a large bouquet of vegetables (HK$32) and deep-fried bean curd with seaweed rolls (HK$58) which only needed dipping in the pot of a few seconds to keep its crispy texture, and cuttlefish balls (HK$68) which came in yellow, red, crimson and black.
To cool the palate, a dessert of green tea fondant with vanilla ice cream was a good ending.
THE DRUNKEN POT
2/F, 8 Observatory Road, Tsim Sha Tsui 2321 9038
