Soup Master 老火汤 @ HarbourFront Centre

Directly translated to old fire soup, this stall in the little known foodcourt in HarbourFront Centre boasts a decent selection of Chinese soups. I've long heard about them, but only managed to try them recently. This is probably one of the newer outlets, with others at Great World City and Sembawang. If I'm not wrong the pioneer outlet lies in Chinatown.

Soups here are priced higher than regular foodcourt soups, but it's worth the money. Scooped out of giant metal pots shaped like earthern pots, into porcelain crock pot-looking soup bowls, it looks somewhat rustic, yet modern at the same time. The soups are thick with the flavors of all the good stuff going into them. Not the usual kind you find in a foodcourt.

CW had a Buddha Jump Over The Wall ($8), chock full of goodies. I could taste a very strong flavor of fish maw, and saw he had a lot of ingredients such as dried Chinese mushrooms, red dates, dried scallops, dried oysters and something that looked like abalone slices (though I doubt it's real abalone given the price, but hey, it makes people happy).

I ordered a 十全大补人参鸡汤 ($6.50). Directly translates to ten tonic ginseng chicken soup. It's essentially a ginseng chicken soup beefed up with so call ten strong herbs into 'completeness'. Again, the herbal taste is strong, the soup is very full of the flavor, and really rich. Only had one drumstick in it, which was a little dry after boiling too long. The essence of the chicken must have all gone to the soup. Overall a very good herbal soup and I liked it.

XP ordered a lotus root with pork rib soup, again, rich and flavorful. It's so well cooked that the soup had turned opaque. Guess there's really a lot of pork essence in there. A really nice change from the usual clear soups that tastes superficial. These soups really had a lot of depth and dimension to them.

E ordered a pig stomach with ginko and beancurd skin soup, not as peppery as the usual kind. The beancurd skin had all dissolved into the soup, resulting in a white colored opaque soup. Forgot to get a picture of his. It's nice too, but he preferred CW's soup. Haha...

Soup with rice

Lotus root with pork ribs soup

十全大补人参鸡汤

Buddha jump over the wall

Soups here comes with free refills, for the broth only, not the ingredients. Good enough, since the essence is really the broth. But the serving is actually large enough that I didn't need a refill. Moreover, at the concentrations of the herbs (especially mine), I think with a refill, I will get so 'heaty' that I'll end up with a sore throat. CW did ask for a refill, and got half a bowl of broth. Somehow the refilled one had a very pronounced burnt taste to it. Not sure if something in the main pot burnt after he got his initial bowl, or whether they have a separate pot of broth for the free refills. Nonetheless, I enjoyed my lunch, and will be back in the future for a good bowl of nice, rich Chinese soup.