$6 HOTPOT vs. $250 HOTPOT in Singapore | BEST Hotpot Deal EVER!

Hey guys, Mike Chen here in Singapore. It's the middle of the night, I'm at the gym. This is the best time to work out, there's nobody here. But ever since coming back into this country, my sleep schedule has been really out of whack. I think yesterday I went to bed at 10 a.m., woke up at 4 p.m. And right now, this is workout time for me. But even though I should be awake, I'm looking outside, it's all dark. It kind of makes me feel a little lazy, a little tired. So what I've been doing is, and this brings us to the sponsor of the video, Athletic Rings. I bring a travel pack of Athletic Rings to the gym, along with a bottle of water. Do about a 10 minute warm up on the treadmill. Powder goes in, shake it up. About 8 to 12 ounces of water, and drink. At least for me, this has been really good whenever I need a pick-me-up, whenever I need some extra energy. Of course, it's something I take every single day to make sure my body has all the vitamins and minerals it needs. Because with every single pack or scoop of HE1, you get 75 vitamins and minerals, probiotics, whole food source, superfoods. Probiotics, of course, really good for your gut, and I definitely need a lot of that. And I told you guys before, when I used to travel, I would carry around at least half a dozen bottles of different vitamins, minerals. It's super complicated, it's super expensive, it's heavy. My suitcase rattles wherever I go. This is just a really convenient way to stay healthy. And since I no longer have to buy all these different vitamins and minerals, this replaces everything. So it's a really convenient way to stay healthy, and great value as well. With every box, you get a big pack of HE1, travel bottle, travel packs, also a year's supply of vitamin D. I've been taking this for over a year. I feel better, I have more energy. My workouts are better. And HE1 always follows the latest research. They go beyond third-party testing. Make sure whatever they're giving you, you're getting the highest quality and the best nutritional daily habits on the planet. So if you want to give it a try, I've got my link down below. You'll get a one-year supply of free bottle of vitamin D, which you really should be taking every single day, and five free travel packs with your water. This is really a game-changer for supporting your immune system. HE1 really does provide your body with everything it needs for optimal performance every single day. All right, I'm going to finish my workout and hot pot towards tomorrow. Good morning. So hot pot culture is huge in this country. There's hot pot places, mala tang places, mala xiang guo places, pretty much in every shopping center and every hawker stall. There's even a road, and on this road, all you can see, like the whole street, is all you can eat hot pot places. We're definitely going to go visit that at some point. But today, I wanted to go to a couple of hot pot places. They're both really unique and on two dramatically different price points. First one is pretty close to where I'm staying right now at Thompson Center. I walk by this place pretty much every single day. And from what I understand, when you eat there, they give you a stuffed animal. Let's go check it out. As soon as I walk through this corridor, I smell food. It's nice. This is my routine pretty much every single morning because the subway station is also here. Freshly squeezed orange juice, two Singapore dollars, about $1.50. They give you four oranges to make the orange juice. Fruit juices in this country, especially through a vending machine, is just the best deal. They give you a free gift with every single table. And every time you eat hot pot here, they give you a stamp where eventually you earn stuffed animals. The hot pot place I'm at right now is called Shirley Fung. It's probably the most popular discount hot pot place in Singapore. Lunch sets start at around $8.50 Singapore dollars, so about $7. You can get a hot pot lunch set. It's really cute. There's tons of stuffed animals. Only thing is, it's really confusing. Look at this. This is all the menus here. One, two, three, 36, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine menus. I'm going to try out their regular lunch set, which again, starts at around $8. And then what's kind of cool is that if you come before 5 p.m., your a la carte menu is discounted an additional 20%. Really good deal. Each set, $8.80 Singapore dollars. Includes all you can drink. Includes the sauce bar, which is up there. You're able to select two broths with your water. Let's go check out the sauce bar. Just So she just came over and said that we can choose one. There's different ones of these. And take it with us, free stuffed animal. The hot pot is converting to US dollars, about $6. I just looked it up, $6 right now with today's conversion rate. And you get a hot pot, a set meal, unlimited drinks, and a stuffed animal. So broth got the mala in it, got a chicken broth. Hot chicken is not bad. This mala, oh, tons of heat, good amount of flavor. I'm not too shabby either. Broth is pretty good. So let me show you what you get in a set meal. You get a veggie platter, which includes tofu, carrots, enoki, mushroom, cabbage, lettuce, bok choy, wood ear. And you get a protein, which it's not a lot. I think the best value is to get the pork meatballs. So you get one, two, three, four, five, five solid sized meatballs. This is what I think is the best value of this place. Ordered the handmade noodles, in-house made noodles. Look at this, biang biang noodles. This is before the biang biang noodles is stretched. You're essentially getting hot pot with a free handmade biang biang noodle here. Two is definitely one full bowl of biang biang noodles. And before you eat it, you just call them, they'll come and stretch it for you. Gonna drop in all the ingredients that require a lot of cooking, like the tofu and the wood ear. This hot pot has a little enclosure here. So you can just put your more precious ingredients so it doesn't get lost everywhere. We've all experienced this, losing awesome ingredients in a mass ocean that is a hot pot. I don't know whether it's the delicious broth I'm smelling or the value. I'm just so hungry for this. That is a pretty good tasting hot pot. Dipping sauce tastes good. They have pretty much every single sauce I want. Oh, sorry, it's so steamy. So far, so good with the snack. I have to move the camera a little bit. It's getting too steamy. Pork meatball, it's delicious. Bouncy, a lot of flavor. I think they put some cilantro in here as well. All the vegetables are fresh, enoki mushroom is delicious. Tofu is good. The broth has a really nice mala flavor. The spice level will definitely make you sweat. I think I'm almost ready for my noodles. Noodles are ready. That's pretty good bambiang noodles. Chewy texture, nice and stretchy. Beautifully al dente. Completely soaked and absorbed all that great mala flavor. Put a meatball in there. Give it some soup. This is a pretty darn good lunch, especially for six US dollars. Where do you find a deal like this? Oh, that broth is so good too after it's been cooking all the ingredients. Again, this is gonna cost less than a McDonald's extra value meal. Why wouldn't you just eat here every single day if you could? After the noodles, I can feel myself. I'm good. Like I'm not incredibly overly sneezing my butt out full, but I'm satisfied. Especially if you get the noodles, that's a pretty substantial lunch. And if you're still hungry, drink the broth or get another noodle. I don't think I've ever found a hot pot with as good of a value and flavor as this place in my life. I don't know how they pull this off. I really don't. I love it though. Pretty good hot pot meal. And I got a stealth animal. This is one of the greatest things. So pretty much every day, there's a period of time where it just thunderstorms. During those time, just come home. I like to sit on my balcony because trees everywhere is pretty private. Get one of these coconut drinks, which are pretty much the best thing ever. And just sit and enjoy the rain. Oh, it's so refreshing. In fact, take a little break. Let me wash my shirt. And then we're gonna check on the hot pot place. Now for the other hot pot with a much higher price tag. Tso Tso. They have tea for people who are waiting outside. This is a pretty impressive first impression of a hot pot place I've ever seen. This is really, really nice. The vibe is a restaurant in ancient China kind of feel. And apparently there is an appetizer buffet. It's pretty much just the stuff that you'll get like the peanuts and seaweed. Stuff you usually get at the sauce bar. The recommended are Berkshire pork collar slices, Australian breast fed short rib, and Australian lamb. There's live crab, lobsters, seafood, or look at this, assorted beef and seafood platter. That looks really beautiful. A vegetable platter. Whoa. One broth here is about 40 Singapore dollars. And they have Taiwan style spicy coconut chicken, fish with Sichuan pickle soup, Sichuan spicy tomato, bovine bone with tomato base, fresh mushroom, triple flavor hot pot. Oh, a whole 118 in this private room only. You can get a private room if you spend a minimum of $666. That is devilishly expensive. Ton of meat, including of course, Wagyu. There's that seafood tower again. Wow. Live geoduck, abalone. Wow, look at this seafood combo. This is crazy pretty. Mashed prawn paste. Oh, wow. So a portion of these pork balls was equated to the whole lunch special. I got it at the other place. Vegetable platter, mushrooms. Oh my gosh. Drinks. Bubble tea. This might be the priciest hot pot I ever been to in my life. No, not might be. I think this is. Might as well get the Yuanyang, the two flavor hot pot. I think the recommendation, at least online, is Taiwan style spicy soup with a tofu inside. And maybe either the coconut with the fish. I'm leaning more towards the fish because it looks like you get a bunch of fish in this bra. And that will probably justify the cost. Although I do want the tomato. I wish I get three, three flavors, but I'm afraid of stepping into a private room where it costs 666 to get in. I'm gonna see if there's any lunch specials. If not, let me just get this seafood meat platter. Got as close of a set as I could find. A meat platter, beef seafood platter, and a veggie platter. And then of course the appetizer buffet. So let's see what's out there. This is a very unique looking hot pot. It's beautiful. It smells so, so good. The bubble tea has arrived. This is their house special bubble tea made without hong pao, which is a brand of tea. Very delicious tea. Anyway, like I was saying, it smells incredible. The fish smells great. Smell the spice, the mala. And there's so much ingredients inside the hot pot broth itself. Oh, that's yummy. Very nice, very strong tea flavor. This is what I love in a good milk tea. Bubbles are small and chewy. 30% sugar. This is good. Plus you leave a Google review, this is free. I'm leaving a Google review. So inside the soup base itself, look at this. This is the fish one. There's fish filet in here. Sprouts, Chinese sour cabbage, numbing peppercorn, chilies, this is gonna be spicy. It's gonna be sour. It's one of my favorite dishes. And this is a Taiwan pie. So this thing has pig trotter inside, then giant cubes of tofu. And you can see cardamom, bay leaves. I don't think this thing has much numbing element to it. I don't see any peppercorn, but it's definitely spicy. Wow, sour cabbage fish soup is amazing. This tastes like the dish that I love. But now it's a hot pot broth. Wow, the Taiwan spicy. It's very herby, a little medicinal tasting. Not bad, it's spicy, but I love the sour cabbage soup so much. They're still working on the seafood. I wonder if they'll let me get a shot of what they're working on. It's pretty cool. Let's go take a look. The meat and seafood tower is here. This is a beautiful sight. Beef on the bottom, fresh clams. Second layer, the seafood layer. There's salmon, abalone, prawn, scallop, razor clams. Fresh tofu skin. Also, I forgot to introduce the veggie basket. Lotus, corn, lettuce, spinach, gnocchi, mushrooms, shiitake mushroom, dried tofu, fish tofu, wood ear. And them putting together this tower was very labor intensive and really fun to see process. So the beef is freshly sliced. The clams are shucked fresh from the fish tank. All the seafood is meticulously prepared. It's a beautiful tower. Bar looks almost ready. The beef is ready. The appetizer bar is really just seasoning for the hot pot. Prawn, suck on my head first. That's really, really good. They have their own already made seasoning. So this is a Thai chutney. That's pretty good. It's really spicy. The meat is okay. It's a little too lean for me. I wish it was fattier. But what they just did was really cool. They brought over more pieces of tofu for the spicy pot. And I read that you can also have them pack this up for you to take home, which is really nice. And I really like their Thai chutney. It's classic Thai seasoning. Garlic, chilies, a lot of chilies. Spicy tofu here is really good. I've been dying to try a pig trotter as well. I like the pig trotter. Overall, I feel like the flavor of the Taiwan tofu soup is good, but when you get the fish soup, it kind of dwarfs it. Because this one is just so flavorful. Let me get some of this fish. Fish is pretty good. But that soup is just genius. Oh, so good. We actually have to rush a little bit. This is not an all-you-can-eat buffet, but there is a time limit. So you have a dining limit of two hours to finish your food. This is great. There's fresh fuzhu, fresh dried tofu. Also, a giant piece of salmon in here in the fish platter, in the seafood platter. Put that here. Oh, they also brought over a slush. Like a lemony slush. That feels good on my burning tongue. Try out the famous shrimp ball. This is really good. Usually, shrimp paste doesn't have giant chunks of shrimp in here. This one does. And it's much sweeter and bouncier, and the texture is much better. That's really good. Honestly, the beef, though, for something of the price of this tower, I expect a better-tasting beef. The basic fatty beef at any hot pot restaurant I feel like is better than what they're giving you here. This might be really good quality beef, but it's just too lean. So far, shrimp paste, the dried tofu, the soup has all been sensational. Grab the piece of salmon. Oh, that's cooked nicely. Salmon is good, but if you overcook it, it's gonna be way too dry. If you get that platter, make sure to not overcook the salmon. Little clams are really good. I can't wait to taste this broth after all the seafood has been stewing in here. It's gonna be even more delicious. Sometimes a hot pot is like a washing machine slash dryer. When ingredients go in, like, I just have no idea where they go. I swear there's a whole dimension out there of missing hot pot ingredients. Oh, the apple morning is so good. Perfect tenderness. So snappy and sweet. Two hours is almost up. I've been frantically drinking the soup, but they just kept refilling it, so I'm not gonna say no. The sour soup broth definitely gets diluted. As they refill the pot. Still good, though. Overall, this is a really good hot pot place. I mean, it's beautiful. All the food ingredients, so fresh. The hot pot broth is ridiculously young. Again, especially that sour cabbage fish one. With that said, it's definitely the priciest hot pot I've ever been to in my life. So this is 100% reserved for a special occasion. So comparing the two hot pot places today, I like the one we went to for lunch. It's affordable, the staff is attentive, the food's delicious, and the value, you cannot beat that. This, again, I love it. I love coming here. This experience has been amazing. The staff here is also amazing, super nice. But this is definitely a once a month, maybe a few times a year kind of place for me. And if you have ever been into the private room of this place, just let me know. Oh, also, the place we went this morning, got a free stuffed animal. On an $8 lunch menu set. So update, you are able to bring all your leftover hot pot home, and they pack extra spicy tofu in there for you. And also, if you do come here, a good way to kind of save a little money is you can purchase their gift card and use it right away. So if you purchase a $300 gift card, it's $50 off. So that's a good way to save a little bit. Also, I didn't know this, but on a weekday before five o'clock, the sour cabbage fish broth is free. I would definitely come back here for that. And make sure you don't forget, leave a Google review, get a free bubble milk tea.