In Yunan, one of the food recommendations is the Wild Mushroom hot pot. Noted as a beloved delicacy with some health benefits, wild edible mushroom hotpot restaurants are all over Lijiang Ancient Town
With too many choices, we asked our hotel concierge for his recommendation and he suggested visiting the restaurant 吃菌客 ( loosely translated as Eat Mushroom Guest) as they have a very clean environment as well as respectable supplies for their ingredients. Located in the main square next to the waterwheel, it is easy to locate the restaurant. There are a few branches but we went to this main branch which has a nice view of the town at night
The restaurant has a beautiful courtyard with some decorations for customers to take photos of and many resting areas for people to sit down and rest. The dining areas are split into different halls as the restaurant building layout is in such a way that only the outer perimeter has dining spaces while the inner court and space are for private dining
The menu is limited to mushroom pot with add-ons of ingredients. They also have combos which is good for groups of people with different ingredients paired with the set. I found the menu quite confusing so I had to get the help of the server to put in an order manually. I noticed that many of the locals could put in their orders via the app
The main soup base is served first and depending on your selection of the base, ours came with loads of cordyceps mushroom, red dates and wolfberries
Our mushroom course was served with the other ingredients in our combo set. In terms of meat, the selection was limited as most of the meat items were beef and I could not eat it
The server will help to put in the wild mushrooms to cook before setting a timer and putting this bamboo cover on the pot. It looked very adorable like a Vietnamese hat. The server announced that the mushrooms needed to be cooked for at least 20 minutes to ensure they were safe for consumption. Both me and my friend did not really hear that properly so we opened the hat 5 minutes short of the timer ringing and started drinking the soup. The server was shocked when he spotted us and came with a soup ladle to take some samples out of our pot to test the safety of the mushrooms for consumption. I am guessing, our soup sample passed since they did not come back to us and both of us did not get sick
As there were not many choices for meats, we ordered the cooked fried pork strip which came with chilli powder for dipping. The meat was nicely fried and crispy in quite huge chunks and tasted quite yummy to me at this point as we were meatless for the meal. A bottled Chinese tea was also provided to quench our thirst for the meal
There was an item we were encouraged to order as a speciality for Yunnan; the waxed pork ribs. Similar to what other kinds of waxed and seasoned meats are like, the pork ribs are dry, hard and salty as we tried one on its own. The way it was supposed to be eaten was to be put into the soup to cook together
About the taste of the soup, the original soup was very light in flavour but once the mushrooms were added, there was a natural umami favour giving the soup plenty of depth. It was light, sweet, nourishing and hearty all at the same time. The wild mushrooms were also crunchy and flavourful and many of them cannot be found in Singapore at all. In terms of the other ingredients, they were mediocre, with thinly sliced luncheon meats and small vegetable portions. My biggest complaint was the change of flavours after adding the waxed pork ribs which made the soup extremely heavy, salty and oily. The soup was a lot more heavy on the stomach and the pork ribs were still too tough to eat even after long cooking times. As you can see we left most of the pork ribs intact. We wanted to reorder more mushrooms to get the clear soup again but the servers told us we would need another 30 minutes of cooking time again so we gave it. Our conclusion is not to add the pork ribs at all if you ever dine here
Overall, I loved the natural flavour and sweetness of the soup which was fantastic for a cool evening. The lack of ingredients was quite disappointing but the availability of wild exotic mushrooms with different textures is still quite an experience. Just remember to cook the mushrooms long enough and do not order the pork ribs. Another note is the mushrooms are also quite pricey as they claim to use only grade 1 mushrooms which have been prepared properly compared to cheap ones where people get food poisoning
Bear Travels . Bear Eats . Bear Cooks 