My First Experience with Steam Pot
After a nice visit to the Kavalan Distillery, we headed into Yilan for some seafood steam pot. If you don’t know what this is, well it’s as the name suggests. The food is cooked with steam. It’s similar to hot pot, where it’s a communal meal. However, there’s no soup base. Though at the very end you get congee made from the steam runoff from your selection. In our case, it was going to be seafood congee. This place we found was known for their fresh seafood.
We got there soon after they opened at 5pm. That meant we were the first people there. Good time to roam around and get shots of the place. Each table was fitted with all the necessary equipment. The steam pot was where the magic happened. In the center of them were these little openings where the hot steam comes through. It cooks what’s on top while the pan collects below. May sound a bit daunting but no worries, the staff is there to assist. Actually, they handle all the cooking and you’ll want them to. They know how long to cook each item. Can’t imagine what would happen if I over steam the food.
Similar to hot pot places, they have a make your own sauce station. You’ll need that since there’s is no seasoning in the ingredients. It’s actually what’s intended. Letting the natural flavors come out. For me, most still needed the sauce. As for what didn’t, it was all the things we got from the other section in the restaurant, the seafood section. That was where we picked out a huge crab. The last area of the restaurant was the self serve ice cream section. Nothing amazing there and I didn’t come here for their ice cream. Just saying.
There are sets that you can order. But for the fresh seafood on display, especially the higher quality ones, you’ll have to order them separately. We got the $1280 NTD set and added their local crab. That was probably the best decision. The set was good but you really need to have the fresh seafood to appreciate the meal. Looking back, they were the highlights of the meal.
蒸饌海鮮蒸物 宜蘭館
No. 39-22號, Yanping Road
Yilan City, Yilan County, Taiwan 260
Verdict: I’d recommend this place when you’re in Yilan.
Before the cooking started, rice with chopped onions and cubed beef was added to the pot. By the end of the meal, this would all be ready.
Here’s the majority of the items of our set. Looking at the vegetables alone here. You can see that there’s a good variety.
Here it is prepared for us. Yeah, we choose a female for all the crab roe. May not look pretty but it was all tasty. And there was so much roe in this one. We couldn’t finish it all. But that made the congee that much more tasty.
$2000 NTD
The crab we selected was brought out to us. One final shot before it’s prepared for steaming. Hopefully you can gauge the size of this.
The main offering of the set was this collection of seafood, shrimp, clams, and abalone. Very fresh offering, especially with the abalone. They were actually still moving when it was brought out.
The congee at the end was loaded with crab roe. Oh it was amazing! We took most of it to go and it was great having it the next day.
Included with our set was beef. I don’t know what cut was included but it was just okay. Definitely needed a dip in the sauce.