Hot Pot

April 24, 2009

Last night I went out with my co-workers to get one of the Chinese favorites, Hot Pot. Now, this was my first real Hot Pot experience, and definitely a treat to have gone with Cantonese speakers as they know exactly what to order and how to do it. So John and I both went and told them that we would try anything at least once and then left the ordering up to our new co-workers. Apparently we went to a restaurant that they eat at about 2x a week and has 2 or more locations, one of which is conveniently about a block from my apartment.

So our hotpot was split with Satay flavored broth on one side and veggie on the other. The way hotpot works is that you then order raw veggies and meat and cook it in the broths. In addition to the ingredients that we ordered to put in the hotpot, many people order sashimi to go with the hotpot. We ordered sashimi beef and sashimi shrimp. Lets just say one of the shrimp heads was still moving, that is how fresh the sashimi shrimp is. The beef on the other hand was very lean and sliced paper thin. I never thought I would really try raw beef, even steak tartar, but here I am and I said I would try anything once, so raw beef it was. You dip the beef like you would sushi in a soy/wasabi sauce and let’s just say, much to my surprise, it was amazingly good and I would definitely order that dish again.

Another thing that was ordered and that we ate included “fried chicken” but it is the soft bones of the chicken, so I am thinking the tendons. For the hot pot we had things such as dumplings, marbled beef and then more unique food items. One of which we were told was Beef Neck – but I am not really sure what part of a cow it was as it was all white and came in small strips. It was good – but I still have no idea what it really was. In addition there were these balls that were filled with goose liver and then we had “son of chicken” which means the chicken testes. Surprisingly they look like kidneys but taste like a chicken sausage. Too bad I don’t have pictures to share, but I am sure you can Google that and find a nice demonstrative picture. All I have to say is I am very, very surprised by how large they are.