There aren’t any signs on Najda street for Qian Zhou hotpot – just a row of red lanterns in the second floor window lets you know where the restaurant is. And that is inside a very grim building indeed – the grubby escalators don’t work, a strong smell of bleach fails to hide a whiff of something worse and it’s so dark you practically have to feel your way there. In fact, the location is almost like a challenge to test just how badly you want to try the food. But if you have the mettle, you’ll be rewarded when you reach Qian Zhou Hotpot – it’s warm, brightly lit and looks spotlessly clean.
For the uninitiated, hotpot is a Chinese, cook-your-own style of dining, and is great fun. First, you select a flavoured broth from the menu – we opted for hot and spicy – and this is placed in the centre of the table with a flame underneath. Next, you choose your ingredients from a list that includes pre-prepared vegetables, meat, seafood and noodles, which are brought raw to the table. We lobbed everything from cabbage to fish balls into the pot, swirled the soup around with our chopsticks and left it to cook. The final part of the ritual is to load up on condiments. These are laid out like a miniature buffet, and we filled our bowls with sesame seeds, various chilli oils, soy and peanut sauce, and in authentic Chinese style, a big bowl of MSG.
There’s a fine art to managing hotpot, and it’s one we haven’t quite developed yet. Food that floats when it’s cooked, such as tofu and fish balls, is easy, but we should have paid more attention to our white rice noodles, which sank straight to the bottom and congealed into a gloopy jelly. However, if you can get it right, hot pot can be delicious, and the ritual makes it an entertaining way to share a meal.
The bill (for two)
Hot and spicy soup, with range of ingredients Dhs188
Total (excluding service) Dhs188
