Eating a Chinese Hot Pot Meal

After a pleasant afternoon of tea tasting with Tea Master Tony Chan, we were invited by Tony and his wife to have a dinner of Chinese Hot Pot at a French restaurant Masion de Su. Chinese Hot Pot meals are a lot like American fondue but differ in many ways. Each person has their own pot with gas burner controls. Instead of oil, the pot is filled with a broth of your choice. I went with pumpkin milk. You then choose your meat selection and get about eight extra sides to cook in the pot. Chop sticks are used to transfer items from you side dishes into the pot where they would cook for a minute or two before being removed to your small rice bowl. The experience of cooking was just as much fun as fon du, but made far more interesting by the use of chop sticks which made it a bit more challenging to fish out various cooked items. The idea is to start cooking some foods before others given they take longer to cook. Tofu blocks went in first then some of the harder vegetables. While those were cooking you could put in pieced of meat. To add to the challenge, as you pulled items out you would need to let them cool before eating. I found that having two items out in my rice bowl seemed to work best. I would eat one while the other cooled. After finishing I’d pull something else out of the hot pot and into the rice bowl. The food was absolutely delicious and I felt like I’d eaten a whole Thanksgiving dinner by the time the meal was done. I think I’m also the only one in the group who ate the entire hot pot.