Simply put, I love hot pot. It is a passion that burns so intensely Michael has no choice but to tolerate it. (He does not understand the appeal of paying an establishment to cook your own food - but that's because he has not yet reached enlightenment. A few more times and I know he will surely be wooed and won over.) Successful hotpot is the culmination of fresh ingredients, a tasty dipping sauce, and an ingenious soup base. A trifecta, if you will.
My appetite seems to double when I am confronted with the simmering scents. We recently went to try the spicy Sichuan hot pot at San Xi Lou, a delicious and authentic Sichuan restaurant tucked away in a mall on Garden Road. I prepared for the meal by thinking lustily of all the different kinds of vegetables and meats that I wanted to sample. I may have been drooling heavily by the time we got to the restaurant.
We opted for a mixed hotpot soup base - one side was the "numbing hot" soup base, filled with various peppercorns, chili peppers and chili oil. Too scared to commit to just the spicy soup base, we also ordered the chicken and pear soup base for the other half. Whenever the numbing chili oil base proved too much, we took a respite and dipped and cooked our food in the chicken broth.
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| The yin and yang of hot pot |
I made quick work of the check-mark menu. I had to really exercise restraint to avoid picking too many plates of food. It was all so delicious. We polished off plates of Mongolian lamb slices, napa cabbage, tender tofu, fried taro and hand-pulled noodles.
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| Aftermath of my voracious wake |
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