Siam Square Mookata

I never realised there was a steamboat place so near to home! This is at the food centre facing the open space car park.
Pluses:
1) Cheap — Food comes in small plates. Quantity is decent. Normal plates $ 1.80 and slightly more premium items $ 2.80.
2) You get BBQ with steamboat!
3) I liked the mushrooms, sliced beef, green veg, Foo Chow fishballs, meat balls (my friend said just like Chong Qing Hot Pot), cheese tofu. My friend loved the fatty belly pork, luncheon meat. The stock also went very well with instant mee. haha
3) Big pitcher of stock on your table for easy topup. You need to topup frequently since the «moat» of stock is not big and evaporates relatively quick.
4) Parking ok at night. Since all the other stalls are closed except the nearby satay.
Cons:
1) It’s bloody hot here. Having said that the fans are on and they do help but I think the hawker tables are too narrow for steamboat as you end up quite near the pot.
2) They don’t seem to have fish paste (one of my faves).
3) You can’t do a big group here together because of the hawker tables size limitation.
We fed 3 with more to spare (which we handed to a table full of boys nearby). Cost us $ 47 only!
After steamboat, my tip is to walk to Havelock Road and go to Dessert Project for ice-​cream to cool down.
Another tip — they close at midnight!

This is the first time I tried mookata. Actually it was only when I looked this place up online that I learnt that mookata means «pan pork» in Thai. Essentially it is a grill surrounded by a steamboat moat, so you get the best of both worlds — steamboat and bbq meat. I have seen a number of these around town which definitely looks tempting for someone who enjoys both steamboat and bbq, so when I found one in my neighborhood I grabbed my partner in crime for a feast of fatty pork and lard. Siam Square Mookata is located in the Havelock Road Cooked Food Centre with a store front that looks like its neighbors selling typical hawker centre fare. But when night falls you see all these tables with gas stove and the bbq/​steamboat grill popping up around the store and families and friends start gathering around the tables, then comes the sizzling sound and alluring aroma of grilled meat.
Service is friendly and efficient and ordering is simple. You get a table with the gas stove lit, sit down and will be handed the menu, then you ticked all the items you want on the ordering sheet and hand it back. Within 5 mins your order come flowing in and the fun begins, you can choose to cook your food on the grill, in the steamboat soup or one after the other as you wish. All the bbq items come in small dishes with a price range of 1.80−2.80 so it is easy to over order. We got the pork neck, «three-​layered» bacon, chicken marinated in pepper sauce, squid, cheese tofu, mama noodles and veggies (mainly to ease our guilt). There are also some cooked Thai dishes, we had the Thai squid and vermicelli salad, it was definitely very authentic and authentically spicy that I ended up ordering extra rice to save my burning tongue. It was also good that the drinks and coffee stand was close enough to the rescue. Do remember to down your meat with lots of cheap beer coz mookata is sooo heaty.
My verdict? Good food and great atmosphere for enjoying DIY grilled meat in a half outdoor setting. How can you go wrong with grilled pork and lard. I would definitely recommend this place for a good value meal with your homies. But take my advice and DO NOT pick this place for a first date because at the end of the meal, everyone will be sweating like a pig due to the lack of AC.