HOT POT. We hot pot.

Last night, Maggie and I went to a pretty popular hot-pot chain in Beijing called 'Hai Di Lao.' Good thing she made a reservation because our taxi driver was like..."what? you're going there at 7pm? psssh....have fun standing in line because gaokao just finished and people are out celebrating."

Gaokao is the name of the college entrance exam that high school students in China obsess over and take right around this time. They literally study from the crack of dawn until into the wee hours for weeks/months at a time. Think of every uber-academic Chinese-American you've known and times that by a few hundred million and put them in testing centers around China and you should get a better idea of what gaokao is like.

Anyways, we got to Hai Di Lao and I was delighted to see their waiting area. ATTENTION American restaurants, take a few hints!! To make the wait time less, in the two-story lobby area---there were 5 manicurists, 2 shoe-shiners, about 15 chess tables, and tons of snacks galore. Manicures for free while you wait for your dinner reservation?!!?

BRILLIANT!

Here is a small array of the snacks available during the waiting period. Only in China: potato sticks, walnuts, fruit wraps dusted in sugar, cucumbers, and cherry tomatoes. Smorgasbord of randomness.

Our wait passed by so quickly. It only seemed like a few minutes but that was probably due to the fact we were in the Disneyworld of Waiting Rooms. In Manhattan, I would never ever complain again about having to wait if these options were available. Get your nails done before dinner. Perfect. Seriously....

We were ushered to our table up the stairs with every restaurant staffer along the way bowing and saying welcome. While there are gripes about the lack of service in some places in China because of the non-tipping culture here (why would the waitress bend over backwards if she isn't getting a tip, right?)...places like Hai Di Lao set the bar high for amazing service.

For example, hot pot is a very HOT affair. Lots of steam, boiling soup, etc. Halfway through our meal, a waitress came up and offered us hairbands because of our long hair because her job was to make sure patrons didn't get too hot. Talk about thinking of your every need.

Maggie orders from the encyclopedic menu.

So, for those who don't know and haven't had the pleasure of trying hot pot before...the basic premise is that you order a base soup for your meal, which can be super spicy or just normal stock. Then, you order different raw things to put into the pot. Wait for it to boil. Dip it into the various sauces and enjoy. It's an amazingly delicious meal because everything is so fresh and right out of the pot. Quite the tradition in China and in various Asian communities around the world. It's a very communal dining experience because of how interactive it is and the amount of time it takes to boil things provides the perfect downtime for conversations.

This is noodle boy. Whenever you ordered noodles, he'd come in and start stretching this piece of flour (starts out around hand length) and dancing with it and then he flings it around the room until it's really long. Then the waitress cuts it up and puts it into the boiling pot.

Here's another thing I really liked about Hai Di Lao (which by the way means in a roundabout manner: the catch from the bottom of the sea)...the condiment bar. A big component of hot pot is the sauce you dip it into. Here's just a small selection of the various sauces and add-ins that Hai Di Lao offered. I've eaten hot pot in many different cities and this was the first time I've seen such a display.

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So, after ordering way too much food....Oh btw, the waitresses in China will tell you when they think you've ordered enough or not enough. I like that. Straightforward. We had our base stocks delivered. Maggie ordered the nuclear hot option. It's so spicy it's ruby black colored. I had some. We're talking mouth numbing hot. I ordered the uber-lame chicken flavored one. White as rice. If you look to the edge of our table, that's a 3 layered shelf that held all of our raw dishes, which we then put into the pot one by one.

Hot pot is so professionally popular now that people invent these cool little doo-dads to help boil things. You put the delicate things into these big ladles and then hang the ladles on to this rack thing so they don't float to the bottom of the pot or overturn. It's not amateur hour here!

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This photo happens about 10 times over with various different raw materials. Hopefully you get the point. We ordered.... bamboo shoots (two different kinds! Who knew there were many different kinds of bamboo shoots?! Pandas?!); shrimp, tofu, beef, veggies galore, mushrooms galore, cow stomach and pig brain. These last two, you're probably like...Whaaaaaaaa!?!?! Yes, they're quite common in China but even I was like...WHAAAAAAA? Maggie couldn't stop laughing. So I sucked it up and hailing Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations as my hero, I tried the pig brain.

DISCLAIMER! PIC OF BRAIN COMING UP!!!!

Moral of the story: I will never try pig brain again.


But there's a first (and last) for everything. :)

After the meal and true to Chinese fashion, Mag & I sat there for about another hour just talking and eating sunflower seeds and watermelon. 3.5 hour dinner. One for the books and def for this blog.

Can't wait to go back again! Who's in next time?!