India, Feb. 4 -- From reunion dinners to weekday meals, steamboat makes for a comforting meal, and these places in Singapore do it superbly.

While the terms hotpot and steamboat are used interchangeably in Singapore today, they can delineate the subtle differences in how diners cook raw ingredients in a simmering pot of stock. Hotpot can be used to characterise the Mainland Chinese style of dining, which involves a broth heavily inflected with Sichuan peppercorn and chilli oil, and red meat as the primary accompaniment. Steamboat tends to prioritise chicken and seafood both in the soup and the ingredients. To diversify it further, there is a fish head steamboat, which has ginger and sour plum in addition to the main star.

With the proli...