Steam Boat

Steam boat or hot pot is one of my favourite ways to eat. You get a big pot of stock, sometimes divided into different sections to have different flavoured stocks, and it sits on either a gas fire or an electric hob to keep it bubbling. Raw meats, seafood and vegetables are then lowered into the stock with a small wire basket (like the one you can see on top of the veg) to cook at your leisure. It's a fun and sociable way to eat, and it allows you to cook the food just how you like it. At the end, you usually have noodles to throw in to eat with the well flavoured stock to eat as a noodle soup.

We had ours at this Vietnamese restaurant in the Wing Yip complex in Croydon. We chose seafood (£39.95 for four). It was delicious - it was all very fresh, although a bit cheeky of them to give us the 'crab'stick. We chose a tom yum stock, and this was obviously made fresh and not from a cube. It was both spicy and sour, like a good tom yum should.