Food: TomYum KungFu (Mookata)

Food: Mookata

Good evening all and a happy mother's day to all :) Finally finished some exams at school and realised that its time to get back to writing and stop being lazy. So I was looking back at all the stored pictures on my phone and found about 3 or 4 places that i was supposed to review. So I will review this one first being a nice interesting place that I been to!

When writing this review i finally understood what mookata means. Its basically the word they use to describe their unique BBQ steamboat style. So you will see many different mookata shops all around using the similar BBQ steamboat pot with different stall names! Now that we got that out of the way, lets get to the food.

Scroll down for details such as location and prices!

Food 4.5/5

Note that this place is not a Buffet style type of steamboat but rather ala carte orders. We ordered a bit too much for 2 people (unfortunately it was finishable) 

We started off with the appetizer which is this tasty little mango salad thingy! As with mango salads, its supposed to be slightly spicy and this tasted pretty good!

Appetizer to start off! Mango salad

 The next dish was some green curry chicken.. unfortunately, if you know me well you know that i am not a fan of chicken. However I am a person who is quite choosy about curry. Generally for this dish, the taste was there but was slightly watery and not strong enough. You can add it to your rice but its just ok la in terms of taste improvement.

Green curry

The next dish i ate was this one. Forgot what was inside it but it was really nice because it was crispy when freshly cooked. Unlike some other fried food like this, the portion was just nice and it didn't taste too boring or the chinese word is "NI". Not sure about the english equivalent for this.

Friend something.. suspect it was prawn i guess

 Finally, here is the main course or the main draw of the night which was the BBQ steamboat itself. Its charcoal based and you can see the soup is off at the side. This means that as you cook the food the juices from the cooked food will actually flow into the soup and make it even more tastier. I guess that's the style over here.

The highlight of the night, mookata BBQ steamboat

 You can actually choose the meats and the veggie from the menu and it is changable cause we actually didnt want to eat the prawns. So we got it changed to fish meat or something. They also gave some LARD which my friend taught me to put on the top of the BBQ first to oil the entire BBQ surface before starting to eat it. Very interesting methodology! You can see the menu choices in a picture further below.

Meat and assorted veggies!

 See the lard at the top? and see the meat get cooked! Don't worry the soup is entirely refillable at no charges. It was actually quite nice to slurp off towards the end of the meal! Note that for cooking the fish, it tends to be a bit more sticky so my friend told me to boil the fish meat slightly in the soup portion first!

Cooking in progress!!

 The meat was actually very nicely marinated till we actually ordered a second serving of meat. It was pork however if i wasn't mistaken.

Need more food and nourishment!

They had also two different choices of chilli to choose from and unlike some buffet settings both chilli choices did taste pretty nice and seems thai like. It was a good addition to the food.

Overall the taste of the food was actually pretty good and tasty and the soup also became a very nice addition to the meal.

 Atmosphere 3/5

Undoubtedly, as with many of the shops in this vicinity, space is a major constraint and you can feel this as the shop is relatively narrow although the tables are spaced to the most extreme positions already. You will be sitting either on the small chairs or on the seemingly stone benches along the walls of the place if you take a seat inside the restaurant itself. Hence once you sit inside, you are actually probably gonna be trapped by the seat and your friends so toilet breaks become a big deal!

This place tried to do something useful by actually putting a wooden board across two tables when the people are well seated to increase the eating space which is a nice move. The staff are pretty non-intrusive and they wont bother you but neither are they much of a positive or negative impact to the experience.

Overall, not the best place to sit and talk, but it is good enough for you to sit and eat and its not too tightly packed till the staff will bump into u and stuff. Hard chairs though but probably can survive for the eating time!

Price 3/5

Below is the menu for eating. Unfortunately I didn't photograph the entire menu but this shows the standard BBQ set that you can order.

Its strangely cute that for adding noodles and some different kinda prawn u need to add 5 dollars O.o.. thats why we didnt get that.. but in any cases this is the price range, not entirely cheap as these prices just add 10 more dollars and you can have buffet at some places.

Overall for 2 pax, we paid about 80++ dollars which is pretty pricey for 2 pax. Of course we did order quite a lot overall and probably overate but the food doesn't look as expensive as it looks and the portions are not entirely filling so you might order more then usual.

Accessibility 3/5

TomYum KungFu Mookata is pretty near the chinatown mrt if i am not mistaken but you probably have to walk about 5-10 minutes away. Sadly seems like the place is pretty popular so you might want to consider calling in reservation before going as you will take some time to eat and its not very big so waiting time could get significant. 

But all in all, for this end result below its pretty ok...

End result of the dinner

Overall

Food: 4.5 (The food taste is unique and pretty tasty that we had second helpings. It is an interesting experience to try and the tastes should be pretty favorable)

Atmosphere: 3 (Not entirely big shop and a bit cramp, but there are some things they did to try free up some space)

Price: 3 (Portions are not very big, and the food is not entirely cheap. Not very expensive either also for the occasional dinner especially)

Accessibility: 3 (It's near a MRT and walkable from there. Small shop leads to slight crowds though)

Overall: 3.4 (Definitely a place to try once in your life and you could go there for the rough special occasion. Not sure about other Mookata but thanks to my friend for opening my eyes to this type of food, I am sure I will visit another Mookata shop in the near future! Try it our yourself and I think you will appreciate the experience!)

For more details you could check this place for location and opening hours 

http://www.hungrygowhere.com/singapore/tom_yum_kungfu/