Monday 30 March 2009

Chinese Hot Pot

I've had a reader ask me to recommend a Chinese Hot Pot restaurant in Brisbane.

I don't know of any myself, and my googling hasn't thrown up any obvious places. I've been to plenty of Chinese and Vietnamese restaurants in Brisbane that have hot pot dishes, but none that specialise in it.

So if anyone knows of a specialist Chinese Hot Pot restaurant in or around Brisbane, can you let me know? Then I can go and try it out as well.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Don't know if there's a specialist Hot Pot restaurant, but Ben's Vietnamese Restaurant at West End [next to Hotel Diana] does a good Hot Pot. Also Oshin Japanese Restaurant in Sunnybank does a good one as well. Especially good for cold,rainy days like today!!

food bling, Brisbane said...

Yeah I have seen the hot pots at Ben's a few times and they do look really good.

I've had a really good Shabu-Shabu at Sakura at Highgate Hill. I know it's Japanese, not Chinese, but definitely worth a try if you're a fan of hot pot dishes.

Anonymous said...

Beijing House on Queen Street Mall is now offering two types of hot pot dishes. First, there's the Beijing-style blanched lamb (in Beijing it is mutton, over here it's lamb) hot pot, that is you dip paper thin slices of meat into the boiling stock, and it will be cooked and ready to eat within a few seconds (so do not let the slice of meat fall off your chopsticks or ladle!). The meat itself was of good quality, only a couple of slices had bits of chewy sinew on it. Actually I sampled mutton hotpot during my trip in Beijing last year, and while the sauce traditionally served as an accompaniment to the meat at the restaurant in Beijing was more fragrant and complex in taste, I find Beijing House's sauce to be tasty enough. It's essentially a soybean paste and sesame paste (or tahini) mix, quite strong and salty in taste so only slather a little dab on your mutton. It is definitely a good dip for the tofu and mushrooms though.

The hotpot set is $40 for two people. It also comes with plain white tofu (I was served "tofu" made entirely of black sesame paste in Beijing, very tasty!), wombok cabbage, mushrooms and mung bean noodles, it's a reasonable portions. Or you can go for the normal hot pot instead, for the same price. Can't remember what exactly you get with it, but it does seem to have a bit of variety.

food bling, Brisbane said...

Thanks for the tip - I'll have to round up a hotpot friend and give Beijing House a try

Unknown said...

In case you don't already know, a specialist Chinese Hot Pot place opened a couple of months ago. It's called The Cube Hot Pot and it's in the carpark at Sunnybank Plaza shopping centre.

It's probably not a good place to take small babies - they seem to have pretty good ventilation but there are still chili fumes in the air! And I'm not sure if there's anything vegetarian on the menu.

It's a great place and I'd recommend booking, their number is: 3219 5775

food bling, Brisbane said...

Thanks for the tip Lara