Beijing Open-air Buffet BBQ Steamboat, Bukit Padang, Kota Kinabalu

The Beijing Open-air Buffet BBQ Steamboat restaurant in Bukit Padang is one of a few Steamboat restaurants in this area, but, as far as I know, it’s the only buffet Steamboat around.I’ve blogged about Steamboat on various occasions in this blog, several times when I was in China and most recently when I went to Kuala Lumpur. Even here in Kota Kinabalu, the Frisbee people had a Steamboat session, but pictures were few and far between as I had to fight for food as it was in short supply.

The Beijing Open-air Buffet BBQ Steamboat, on the other hand, is one of those places where there is no shortage of food. For a mere RM29 per person, you can eat as much as you can possibly cram into your stomach from 6.30pm until 11.00pm.

Last week Julia held a good-bye dinner for her friend May who was returning to Australia after her month long visit here in Kota Kinabalu. As we were all ready for a long farewell and we quite famished, Beijing Open-air Buffet BBQ Steamboat restaurant seems like the only place to go.

Served buffet style, the various types of food are laid out on the counter ready to be picked. I was pleased to see a wide variety of vegetables along side more seafood than you can shake a stick at. There’s also various other things like sausages, fish balls and at least 3 different types of noodles.

If you know Steamboat, you’ll know how to select the ingredients that will make your broth most flavoursome, and if you don’t know anything about Steamboat, do make sure you invite an Asian friend along for the party.

What makes the Beijing Open-air Buffet BBQ Steamboat at Bukit Padang unique other than the fact that it’s an all-you-can-eat buffet, is the BBQ bit in the name. At the Beijing Open-air BBQ Steamboat restaurant, the broth pot where you soak all your delectable goodies in, is a little smaller than most. This is to make sure for the BBQ section that goes around it.

Like a moat around a bubbling castle, the BBQ tray surrounds the broth pot. And what, might you ask, will you do with such a BBQ tray? Well, BBQ of course! Other than all the food mentioned above, there is also a decent selection of meats, namely chicken, lamb and beef (no pork apparently, my memory of pork, I’ve been told, was not from this restaurant) all marinated in various sauces with various flavours.

You choose your small pieces of meet, and while the broth is simmering in the middle of the fire, you slap on your meat and let them gentle simmer to culinary perfection. There is of course a trick to it and it does take a little bit of practice. My portion of the BBQ tray soon burnt black as I wasn’t paying close attention to it. The meat that did come my courtesy of my gracious dinner companions, were a delicious complement to the Steamboat itself.

If you finish your mains quick enough, there’s usually some kind of desert as well. On this occasion it was fruit. Thankfully, I thought, something to push down all that meat. There are also bottomless containers of drinks, mostly water and Chinese tea, which with the amount of punters that this restaurant can host, doesn’t stay bottomless or long.

The four of us sat until we could literally eat no more and eventually decided to throw in the towel. The Beijing Open-air Buffet BBQ Steamboat restaurant has a strict policy designed to prevent wastage of food, so for every 100g of food you don’t finish, they will charge you. Between our hungry selves, we didn’t even leave crumbs.

At RM29 per person and all you can eat from a wide variety food, including seafood, it would be difficult to beat the value-for-money we experienced at the Beijing Open-air BBQ Steamboat restaurant in Bukit Padang.