Self-Serve
Eating at Hot Pot City is a lot like having Korean BBQ. When you are seated, there is a hot plate at your table for grilling along with a metal bowl in the center for soup. After you order your drink and everything else is up to you from there on. There are refrigerators in the back where you will find a wide variety of foods such as short ribs, rib eye, lamb, venison, chicken, shrimp, mussels, mushroom, baby corn, imitation crab, fish balls, shrimp balls, squid, tofu, etc. They also have vegetable combination plates, seafood combination plates, noodles. You can make your own soup (hot and sour soup, for example) by getting one of the combo plates and adding them to the broth in the center bowl. Just don’t forget to grab the butter (for the grill) before you sit down. At the end of your meal, dessert is also available.
Here, you can be as creative as you want; it’s all up to you. For example, I throw the squid into the hot broth to fully cook it and then I grill it to add some flavor. I’ve tried frying tofu on the grill - it’s a little tricky because it’s so soft, but it’s fun trying and I can even make my own fried rice on the grill. You can throw in a bunch of different ingredients to make your own soup. Remember, you are the chef! Just remember to be careful and not burn yourself. After all, you are working with a sizzling hot plate. They charge by the type of plate you take from the fridge, so a server will come and total everything at your table when you finish eating.
There is one thing that I would suggest though: don’t throw something spicy in the broth if you can’t eat anything spicy and you plan on eating soup. This wasn’t a lesson that I learned because, well, I didn’t do it. (Three guesses as to who did. =P) I believe it was the venison that was marinated with peppers, but whichever plate it was, the meat was too spicy to eat, so it was thrown into the soup to wash off the pepper. Sure, it worked and the venison was no longer spicy, but we forgot that the pepper had been stewing in the hot broth and Wes had a sip of the soup. End result: washing the pepper off of the venison really made no difference in the end. =)
Dessert was a mocha cake that we bought for my brother-in-law’s birthday. The cake itself was light and fluffy and the icing wasn’t too heavy either. My mom asked if we wanted ice cream and decided that we would all eat the cake with Haagen Daz strawberry ice cream - whether we wanted to or not. So I guess my dessert was actually mocha cake a la mode.
On a side note: Nope, I’m not being sensitive, just stating the facts. “My bung” and the subsequent explanation (“I meant to say, ‘My tongue is burning.’”) still do not translate to “I burned my tongue whole”. Although I will give you credit for a well exaggerated story. Job well done. =)
~Steph~
