Largest $300 Mala Hotpot Challenge at A Hot Hideout! | 8KG Bowl of Singapore's Best Mala Spicy Hotpot Eaten!

I'm going to walk you guys through each and every different ingredient as I go. There's scrambled eggs in the middle. But noodle, noodle first. First one. Wait, wait, wait. It's going to be overcooked. I need to wait. Okay. Good afternoon, people. Okay, I'm just going to go straight into it, okay? We're here at Hot Hideout, okay? This is their latest outlet, okay? Today, we're doing Mala. A lot of you guys have been requesting for Mala. Why I chose Hot Hideout, okay? You guys remember I got one video at NTU. For those OG viewers, you guys would know, okay? I did one video at NTU. I went there, ate everything at NTU. Back then at NTU, they only got one outlet at NTU. Now they got like... So they got four outlets now. Going to become seven outlets soon already. Why I chose Hot Hideout, another reason. A lot of people say this is like the best Mala in Singapore. Maybe because they are tailored to the Singaporean taste. So we're going to head in first. I know the boss. I met him at somebody else's wedding. We're going to go in, talk to him a little bit. Find out what is his idea behind Hot Hideout. Okay, so I'm with the owner, Ray. Very handsome, very young owner. How old are you ah? 24 ah. Turning 25, turning 25. I met him at Jet's wedding, okay? You guys know Jet ah? Jet BBQ, the one who does all the ribs and everything. I only know that he's the owner. I didn't even know he's 24. Oh my god, very young. Okay, but anyways, tell me a bit more about your story. Why you start Hot Hideout? I know it started from NTU. How it got started? What's your inspiration between this whole venture? So I think when we were in NTU right, I was a year two student. I think mala was really very, very popular. Yes, it is, it is. And there were like, I think 13 or 14 mala stalls in NTU alone. Oh yeah, remember right? So many mala stalls, yeah. So we were like, what can we sell in school right? And we eat mala every day right? Okay. And me and my friends, we always go out to different halls, try a lot of different mala. We thought to ourselves, why can't we just make our own mala? We tried to figure out how to make a mala. We failed many times. We cooked in the pantry and eventually we opened a restaurant in NTU. So that was the very first outlet. I think in year three, we opened our second outlet. So second outlet is in Sembawang. And then now we have Fineba. And apparently all their outlets are doing incredibly well. I looked them up on Google review first. What is this one? Just opened a 4.7 star. Tell us a bit more about your mala. What's the difference? You guys put Singaporean kind of mala. Okay, I think it's three main things right? Number one, traditionally mala, it's very oily. You know, if you order mala tang, you can't drink the soup. It's very oily and salty and it's not healthy to drink right? Ours, we use like a collagen soup base. So it's very drinkable. Number two, for some ingredients, we actually deep fry them. So like our potatoes, our lotus, our longevity, all these are all deep fried. So it provides a different texture. It's like crispy crispy and you can eat your mala together with it. Interesting. And number three is for your eggs, we actually scramble them. So it's very like youngster vibe. So that's the three main differences. And we call ourselves the Singaporean kind of mala. Mainly because we're not trying to be the traditional kind of mala. We're not trying to tell people we are the most authentic. In fact, we're trying to tell people we are the Singaporean kind of mala. He mentioned exactly why is it so different. We're gonna go and pick our ingredient and we'll see you guys in a bit. Now let's go. So typically how you order is you get one of these bowls. Then you just pick whatever you want. Hot Hideout here right, they got a few variations. We're gonna separate but I think I'm gonna put everything onto that giant bowl. So what do I like to pick for my mala hotpot? I have three things that I always need. Bamboo shoots right, got a lot of very nice texture. When you bite down and then it's got a lot of moisture in there. So when you bite down, it's very very nice. Okay second thing, this is yu mai cai. This is the goated ingredient when it comes to mala hotpot. The spice and everything, it can latch on to this one. Very very nice. Just wondering how much I'm gonna spend on this mala hotpot order. Another ingredient that people like to pick is this one, corn jack. This one right, you guys can pick when you guys are low in calories. This one got little to no calories. The dory fish right, they have the fried option okay for the dory fish. So I'm gonna load up on the dory fish because I love their fried fish. I had their fried fish before, very nice. So they got the potatoes and they're gonna chop it up and they're gonna deep fry the thing. You guys can see ah, very neat, tidy and very very clean. This entire place. I'm not paid to say this but I can tell you guys ah, this place is one of the cleanest mala I've seen. Okay mala usually don't offer mantou but I'm a fan of mantou. So I'm gonna get some mantou for the fried stuff. Not enough, more. So we're done picking all our ingredients already okay. It's right here, got five big bowls. Okay this will all go into the black bowl okay. I think it's gonna fill up the black bowl. But I specifically told the staff that if it's not enough to fill up okay, can add more stuff. Oh here it comes, biggest bowl of mala guys. Look at that. Okay guys, this is a crazy bowl of mala. Why there's so much steam here? Because I got some collagen broth on the side. This one is not the inside got soup one. This is the dry ah, the xiang cao, the gan cao one. Got over eight kg of mala right here. There's like tofu, there's like fried fish, there's mantou. There's a bunch of stuff in there okay. It smells very good, it smells incredible. Okay I'm just gonna start. I'm gonna walk you guys through each and every different ingredient as I go. There's scrambled eggs in the middle right here. They are their signature okay. But noodle, noodle first. First bite, let's go. I never appreciate instant noodle. But this one they really cook it perfect. The texture is just nice. Oh those scrambled eggs are so good though. So comforting. Creamy scrambled eggs that they cook that you can add okay. So one serving of their scrambled eggs just now I score $1.50. I have, I don't know how much this bowl here. Later we'll find out later. And now bite. Today we're sort of racing against time. Producer XL need to rush to his gig. Then today got J Chow concert ah. Then he needs to rave through the jam. So I need to try and finish this within 40 minutes. I really like the fried addition. All the fried stuff on it. It gives it so much different texture though. So this dish right, the texture is not going to be like flat. A lot a lot different texture. This is the dory fish, fried dory fish. It takes a lot of skill to do this. This is a mixture of lotus root and potato. Very very good. The potato is like potato chips already. Lotus root, yes also like chips. They sort of like slice it super thinly before they fry it. Gives it so much texture though. Now I know why people are hooked on to this. I love this as well. This is one of my favourite topping when it comes to mala. Which is the cheese tofu. I just like it. It's just like a typical comfort food. And then some of the pork belly as well. This is also my favourite topping when it comes to mala hotpot. It gives it the porky, you know, flavour on top of all the noodles. I like it. For hot hideout right, they definitely tweak the spice a little bit. To accustom to the local palate. This one the spice right, it's a bit more gentle. The numbness right, it's not the kind that will hit you right. And then you will not taste anything. The numbness is very subtle. But you can actually adjust. Just now I see from the, you know, when you order. You can actually adjust. This is perfect for me. Just now I was at YouTube sharing some of my YouTube journey. For the new aspiring creators. Someone asked me though, very interesting question. Since you guys are live right, I'm just going to say it. Someone asked me if I spit my food when I'm eating. So meaning you take a bite and then spit it. How I'm going to spit it here? Eh, the brother over there brother. How I'm going to spit it here? Watching live ah, watching live. Oh, watching live. He can watch it here. Yeah, so the reason why I'm always on the live stream. Also prove the legitimacy of every single shoot. I really like their special seasoning. Very addictive. It's like when you eat shao kao right, they put on top. Like that Xinjiang. Yeah, Xinjiang kind of like cumin, turmeric. A bunch of like spices in it. Guys, you see my noodles right. When I pick up noodles, it looks like just noodles right. But inside right, there's a lot of seaweed, bean sprouts and all that kind of stuff. I purposely added all those right, to add extra crunch to it. So if you bite down right, the texture is very short. And the other thing I realised right, they don't add the actual peppercorn. When you bite into it, it will handicap you. It will stun you for a while. They just use the peppercorn oil. Which it sort of blends in very nicely. But if you are the kind that you want like the Sichuan kind of spice right. Then this is not for you. Because the Sichuan kind of spice is the kind that will hit you in the face. I don't know if you young people will appreciate this. One of my favourite toppings, bamboo shoots. Not sure locals will like this. But I personally huge fan of this. Lots of moisture, lots of crunch. In China, when you go to China to eat mala right. They tend to order a lot of this black fungus intestine. Which here don't have. Like I said, this is a different kind of mala. And I tell you guys something. I'm here about like six-ish. Outside, the queue is like non-stop one. Insane queue. If you guys are really into the China kind of mala. The very bold, breezy, not exactly healthy kind of mala. This is not the kind of mala for you. I know I have friends that are like that. Because this one is catered to Singapore's palate. If you're someone from Chongqing or Sichuan or frequent there right. And you come to eat this mala right. You'll find this very lag in comparison in terms of the spice level. In terms of the taste. I'm not talking about just the spice. Talking about the mixture of the blend of the spices. Yeah, it's very different as compared to the ones in Chongqing, Sichuan. It's interesting that they actually give you deep fried mantou as an option. If you were to mix this into the regular mala right. This might soak up a lot of the grease and the chili oil. Might not be that pleasant. But if you put it into this kind of mala right. It works, it works. Because this one doesn't have much of the red oil residue you know. This one works. Sichuan is way too numbing for me. I prefer this kind, a bit more mellowed out. Suits my palate a little bit more. Sichuan is not the spice that hits you, it's the numbness. Once it hits you, you cannot taste anything else. But some people just like it. Had a very bad hiccup just now. It's starting to settle. We're just going to fight through this. That numbing has already hit my head. Wait, I can't go down. Almost done, almost done. It's just my hiccups. It's really hindering me. Okay. So this one really caters to the local palate. Can come and try. A lot of very fun additions. Scrambled egg. All the fried stuff and all. I personally like this kind of mala a lot. Okay. But that's it okay. That's it for this video. I'm going to go ahead and finish these last two bites. Scrambled egg. Oh my god.