Winter is synonymous with hot pot, otherwise known as steamboat, for me. The weather is cold – why not have a boiling pot of stock in front of you? Popular in Asian cultures from Chinese steamboat, Japanese
shabu shabu or even Korean
jigae stews, this was to be my first experience of Sichuan styled hot pot.
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Hot pot with half chicken and pork bone broth and half spicy broth at
Red Chilli Hot Pot Restaurant, Glebe Point Road, Glebe |
One of two Sichuan restaurants on the main strip in Glebe, Red Chilli Hot Pot Restaurant is styled in over-the-top ‘oriental’ fashion with carved wood panels, lashings of red and gold, lacquer folding screens, and glass-topped tables around every nook and cranny with a hole and burner built into the centre.
The air in the restaurant is warm with steam and seemingly chilli too, as my ticklish nose would attest to. A menu displays images of non-hot pot items while the hot pot ordering sheet looks more like a spreadsheet than a menu.
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| Tsing Tao beers |
We order up on the only Chinese beer on the menu, and set to work on the spreadsheet. First is the stock selection, and we choose the split spicy and not-spicy broth option.
On the spicy options, there are four chilli levels to choose from (one in the know guided us towards the lowest level, ‘little’) and also four numbing levels. Having never experienced the infamous numbing characteristics of Sicuan cuisine, we ramped this up to a medium level. I could already see that this was going to be fun.
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| Sliced lamb for the hot pot |
After picking some basic hot pot items – sliced beef and lamb, fish balls, fish tofu, enoki mushrooms, Chinese cabbage, dumplings, noodles – we sent the order sheet around the table of ten and watched the order build. Dipping sauces were also ordered: the house special proving popular, as well as raw egg, fresh coriander, and ginger and shallot.
It wasn’t long before two halved steaming pots of stock arrived, one half creamy white and the other scarily red with dried chillies and Sichuan peppercorns floating about. As they hit the boil, dishes of raw food - which were conveniently stored nearby on little tiered wooden stands - got the dunk.
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| Frozen dumplings and cuttlefish balls (bottom) |
The creamy yolk centres of the tiny quail’s eggs made them a hit with everyone, while I was actively fishing for my favourite fish tofu cubes. The house special sauce had fresh chillies in it, and so added a big kick to the already spicy items coming from the red side of the hot pot.
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| Fish roe-filled fish balls – frozen |
The must-try hot pot item was the pointy-topped fish balls that were filled with fish roe. Not so special in their frozen state, when cooked and steaming hot, a careful bite would reveal creamy orange fish eggs; not too different from a chicken egg with its bright yolk centre.
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| Fish roe-filled fish balls – cooked centre |
Warning: possibly disturbing images below.
Some crazy eaters, luckily down the other end of the table and unable to contaminate my hot pot, had ordered ‘pork brain’ as well as pig’s blood jelly.
Both were gruesome in their raw states and not much better cooked, according to one sampler (the brain apparently was very mushy after cooking from its frozen state).
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| Pork brain - frozen and uncooked |
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| Pork brain - cooked |
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| Steamed sweet corn bread |
One of the more unusual non-hot pot menu items were the nubs of steamed corn bread. Their grainy texture reminded me of polenta, and served sweet and warm, these hollow yellow domes were an interesting contrast to the heat and boiled food from the hot pot.
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| Sweet potato noodles – uncooked |
In the end, as the last standing tried to scoop up the last strands of sweet potato noodles, most of us were defeated and clutching stomachs, water glasses, aloe vera drink, tissues or more Tsing Tao beers.
The pain was not nearly so bad as I’d expected (though I’m glad we didn’t go for ‘mild’ chilli) and we were still ably standing to go for drinks, darts and a few games of table tennis at new, nearby Bar 99 to finish the night off – just for a little.
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| Table tennis table upstairs at Bar 99, 99 Glebe Point Road, Glebe |
