The Drunken Pot (Hong Kong) – Sake Bomb Five Flavour Hot Pot
When I was in Hong Kong, my friend Trixie wanted to bring me to the hippest restaurant of the moment so she brought me to The Drunken Pot. It was somewhere in Tsim Sha Tsui and again, just like so many of the other restaurants we’ve been to, it’s on a level in a building so you have to go in a corporate looking building, and go up a couple of floors to enter the restaurant.
Their ‘hip’ idea was to combine alcohol and hot pot together to make ‘the drunken pot’. Concept-wise I can see how putting alcohol in hot pot COULD potentially be delicious, especially when the alcohol evaporates and you’re just left with the underlying flavours.
Everything is a la carte so no all you can eat here. The prices are reasonable but definitely on the higher end side. I would only come back for special occasions.
With the decor looking so oriental, we were surprised to hear Adele and Tay Tay blasting through the stereos to accompany our meal. It was truly like a Top 40’s hit list from Ryan Seacrest’s radio show.
Hot pot is not hot pot without your personalized dipping sauce! They brought out two different sets of toppings to mix in with your dipping sauce. This tray included green onions, red chili pepper, peanuts..etc.
This tray had more of the sauces like satay sauce, black bean sauce, fermented soy sauce, chili sauce…etc.
Here are fish dumplings, beef balls, and squid ink sausages. I know the sausages are really rough looking but trust me, they were pretty good!!
Hot Pot is always better with deep fried fish skin. The best way to eat it is by dipping it into the hot pot broth for a couple seconds to soften it without breaking it apart. The crunchiness combined with the flavourful broth makes for a really crunch and addictive bite!
Ta-da!! And here it is… the Signature Drunken Pot ($328 HKD, ~$56 CAD) consisting of: whole papaya in soup with shrimp (that gets lit on fire with sake), crab and clams soup, a squid ink seafood soup, a sichuan-style numbingly spicy soup, and a teochew style satay soup.
These are called Fortune Bags and I can’t remember what they were stuffed with but they were only okay. Not super memorable.
After our sake burned out, we got another sake bomb (the sphere on the right). Much to our surprise, the flavour intensified and the broth in the middle quickly became one of my favourite broths to dip my veggies/meat in! In front of the sake bomb are tofu shaped into roses. They were super tasty but make sure not to leave them in the broth for too long as it gets mushy and will eventually disintegrate.
For funsies, we got the Seven Color Cuttlefish Balls ($88 HKD, ~$15 CAD). They were super cool to look at and they tasted pretty good- though not worth 15 bucks. s=So if you’re gonna get it, know that you’re just getting it for the lawls!
The Six Colour Soup Dumplings ($78 HKD, ~$14 CAD) were impressive to look at but honestly tasted very similar to regular soup dumplings, aka xiao long baos.
Some bean thread noodles.
Another close up of the squid ink sausages.
All in all, the Drunken Pot was a super cool experience and if you like trying weird things with squid ink, sake bombs, multi-coloured this and that, you’ll really enjoy this restaurant. The prices are obviously on the high side due to the fact that it’s in TST and it’s a ‘trendy’ restaurant, but it’s worth a try if you’re thinking of a unique place to go for a celebration.
Service Rating: 3/5
Food Rating: 3/5
Price: $$$$
Overall Rating: 3/5
Happy Eating!
