Little Hot Pot II

This is another spot that we love so much, it needs another post.

Since our first try about five months ago, we’ve been back at least four or five times. We’re starting to become regulars. I think they need to issue us a punch card. We’ve brought friends, family, and of course went for a late-night dinner just the two of us. This time around we brought my parents, brother and sister.

We checked off various items on the little paper menu they pass around (over half of it I’ve never tasted before) and the staff is always helpful enough to answer all our questions. “What kind of mushroom is that again? What does that taste like? What’s the difference between a bamboo root and a bamboo shoot? Do I have to eat curdled pork blood?” Well, we didn’t ask the last one, but we weren’t brave enough to check it on the menu either.

Some of the many items we ordered this time around were the lamb, cod, scallops, pea tips, baby bok choy (my personal desert-island-hot-pot-vegetable), lotus root (my second desert-island-hot-pot-vegetable), handmade noodles (tasted much like spinach noodles, very nice), bamboo root, and three different kinds of mushrooms. We always get the half-and-half broth, which has nothing to do with dairy and more to do with a yin-yang foodie approach; healing on the right, pain on the left. Just a warning; I’m pretty proud of our spice tolerance. We have a bit of a reputation among our friends. My father has an even higher pain threshold than we do. It’s not good unless you’re sweating. For the spicy side, they offer 1-10. We get a 3. Even my dad caught a coughing fit on a 3. After 6 times ordering the 3, we might be ready to ease up to the 4. Got it? You’ve been warned.

Taking turns dipping, cooking, plunking fat mushrooms and lotus root into the broth to simmer longer, gently and quickly dipping the thinly sliced meats and tender pea tips in until they’re just done, a meal over a hot pot is just as much about the process as it is the destination.

And we are so hooked.

Tags: Bellevue Restaurants, Chinese, Fish, Hot Pot, Lamb, Seafood, Veggies

This entry was posted on October 20th, 2009 and is filed under Restaurants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or Trackback from your own site.