Scary Steamboat

I love steamboat. I truly love all the soup-bases that comprise this healthy dish, until I tried the mala steamboat chongqing-style. 2/3 of the “soup” base was chilli oil. We scooped up 2 rice bowls of just pure oil and still there was more in that unspeakable heart-attack in a hotpot. Why don’t they just take away the soup and boil the chilli oil, so they can fry the meat and stuff in it?!!! It didn’t numb my tongue, and wasn’t extremely spicy but it made me cough a bit as I choked on the peppercorns. Nothing enjoyable about that, trust me.  Luckily, we ordered a mix of clear chicken soup and mala soup, so we still got to eat steamboat the traditional way.