Little Sheep Hotpot from Inner Mongolia is now in Singapore thanks to No Signboard Holdings and I was kindly invited to their official opening! Located at One Fullerton, Little Sheep Hotpot Singapore does have a nice view of the bay area (if you’re seated next to the glass windows) and will attract quite a lot of tourist traffic.
No Signboard intends to open one outlet per year over the next five years and Little Sheep will add diversity to the group’s restaurant business, which is already known for fresh seafood.
The soups
Established since 1999, Little Sheep Hotpot is famous for their lamb delicacies and their original soup base (S$9++ for small, S$20++ for large) is apparently made from 36 different spices and herbs such as goji berries (aka wolfberries), jujubes, black cardamon pods and ginseng. Needless to say, there is also the spicy mala option (S$9++ for small, S$20++ for large) that’s cooked with chilli and Szechuan peppercorns. You can choose to have two soups in a pot like above with prices starting from S$12++ (small) and it depends on which two soup bases you choose from. Besides the original and mala, they also have mushroom and tomato soups (both at S$8++ for small, S$16++ for large).
Taste-test: I liked that the mala wasn’t too chilli spicy and I think most people with various chilli tolerance levels can enjoy this hotpot together. If you like it more spicy, feel free to get more chilli but otherwise, I think it’s a good chilli-hot level. However, in terms of flavour and fragrance of spices, I’m afraid that it is a bit lacking. The one that I had at Spice World Singapore was A LOT better.
As for the original white soup, the taste of the herbs was a bit faint. I prefer my soup to have a stronger herbal taste. It was rather garlicky and we fished out plenty of garlic that was served in the soup.
Interesting fact: hotpot can be traced back to more than 1,000 years ago where Mongolian horsemen would fill their overturned helmets with water and place them in embers to simmer before adding meat and vegetables. As they travelled throughout China, people began to create their own unique hotpot dishes by adding local ingredients! Well…I hope those helmets were washed thoroughly before being worn. Can you imagine wearing a helmet that still smells like last night’s dinner? Hmmm….
The ingredients
Since Little Sheep is known for their lamb, this 3-tier is their Signature Lamb Platter (S$36++) and you get to sample a few their signature cuts. Needless to say, you can opt for individual cuts. They do have beef as well but we only managed to get a plate of what I think is their Signature Beef Selection (S$13++ for small, S$26++ for large). They also have Pig’s Brain (S$8++)!!
The first bite of the lamb was very…lamby. If you don’t like lamb, this might be your worse nightmare. Subsequent slices tasted a lot more like beef. I didn’t find the lamb nor the beef particularly tender and I have bought more tender cuts from the supermarket (yes, for shabu shabu even).
We requested for pork and they gave us the Pork Shoulder (S$9++ for small, S$18++ for large) and it was ok. Not sure whether they misheard us or they were too busy…but we were questioning whether it was pork because the colour was quite a deep shade of red. Maybe we got beef instead?
If meats aren’t your thing, don’t worry as they have various kinds of seafood too and I think that their white pomfret at S$22++ is actually quite reasonable! They have lobster and scallops too…but they didn’t serve those to us. We also tried their Handmade Snakehead Fish Paste (S$9++ for small, $18++ for large) and unlike other hotpot restaurants, this came in a plastic bag and squeezed out like a piping bag. It was fresh so it was good!
Similar to Beauty in a Pot, they too have the Fried Bean Curd Roll (S$5++ for small, S$10++ for large) and I love eating this as it is like a sponge, soaking up the soup but it is very light at the same time.
They served us the Fried Fish Skin (S$4.50++ for small, S$9++ for large) as appetisers but you can also dunk them in the soup. The fish skin was definitely fresh and free from any additives because they were a little bit limp after we started the hotpot.
We also had vegetables! But I didn’t take the photos because…vegetables are vegetables? Mushroom lovers can also order the Mushroom Platter (S$18++) that has enoki, shiitake, eringi and shimeiji.
The grilled items
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