Hot pot is kind of like fondue in dining style, with a pot in the middle of the table and a bunch of meat and vegetables. You cook the food yourself and its best to eat it with a group of friends or people you’re close to, since you’ll be sharing everything. Chef Liu is from Chengdu, and according to A Fiery Feast: Sichuan Hot Pot, hot pot is a Sichuan institution. It’s especially an important cooking technique in Chengdu, because the weather is frequently damp, so the hot pot helps natives withstand the bad weather. The experience in Chengdu is much less sophisticated than in Mala Tang, where it’s eaten as a street food and also in large and chaotic dining halls. Also, the food is extremely spicy, while the spiciness at Mala Tang is toned down.

What makes Sichuan (or Szechuan/Szechwan) cuisine different from other regions of China is that it is famed for bold flavors, spiciness, strong tastes and the usage of garlic, chili pepper, peanuts, sesame paste, and ginger. The four best known regional sub-styles are Chongqing style, Chengdu style, Zigong style, and Buddhist vegetarian style. Mala Tang follows Chengdu style.

We ordered dumplings and spicy cold noodles for our appetizer. The spicy cold noodles are apparently another famous and ever present piece of Sichuan culinary tradition (a recipe is featured here). We thought they were really delicious, although we recommend stirring them since we didn’t realize there was a lot of sauce on the bottom of the bowl. The dumplings were also delicious. Unlike typical Chinese restaurant dumplings, these were thinner and more crescent shaped with a thinner wrapper. They were also served with lots of chili oil, scallions, and spices.

Our waitress was incredibly helpful and advised us that we should have on mala style hot pot and one mild kind, so we could try both. She lit our hot pots and we picked sirloin and tofu for our meat options and broccoli, potato, bean sprouts, and enoki mushrooms for our vegetables. She brought us bowls of soy sauce along with several other condiments we could add to our soy sauce, like chili paste and a barbecue sauce. The meat and vegetable platters were huge – there was no way we could come close to eating all that we were served.

A Fiery Feast: Sichuan Hot Pot has this to add about hot pot style:

Whatever can be boiled, can be thrown into the pot to augment the basic chili pepper oil foundation. Standard ingredients include: all parts of the pig, chicken and cow; various freshwater creatures, such as river eels, snails, frogs and fish; any and all vegetables, including but not limited to potatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, lotus root, bamboo, leeks and onions and a variety of gourds and tubers for which there are no English translation.

Hot pot is the pinnacle of all culinary experiences for Sichuanese. Hot pot is a social event, a bonding experience and a rite of passage. Courage is measured in a man’s ability to eat hot pot repeatedly and vigorously, while drinking as many beers as possible. Acceptance into the heart of a Sichuanese woman requires several demonstrations of hot pot eating prowess. Business deals and marriage proposals alike can be sanctified before the hot pot altar.

We really had fun with the hot pot style. Our waitress brought us bowls and served us broth from the hot pots themselves. After cooking meat and vegetables in the hot pot, the broth becomes a soup. The meat curled up as we cooked it, which we read is because they slice it frozen so it curls up while cooking. Every so often the waitress would add more water to the pot. The tofu was a little difficult to pick up because it became slippery. We had a lot of leftover food we couldn’t cook and eat, and our waitress was kind enough to put all of it into our hot pots, cook it for us, and then package it all as a soup we could take some. She was so nice!

For dessert we had the sesame balls and the pumpkin pie. Sesame balls, or Jin deui, are round balls coated with sesame that are chewy and filled with a sweet paste. Wikipedia states that they are very common and very old. The pumpkin pie was a round disc and served warm. It wasn’t sweet at all, but was still kind of nice to eat. It’s rare that Chinese restaurants have traditional desserts. This dessert is also traditional, but we couldn’t find a lot about it.

However, in learning about the history of drunken noodles, we learned that they aren’t Thai in origin! Drunken Noodles (Pad Kee Mao) was made popular by ethnically Chinese residents in Laos and Northern Thailand. It’s similar to Pad See Ew, but has more flavor and uses broad noodles. So, actually aside from being made by permanent residents in Thailand, it isn’t a staple of Thai cuisine – just wildly popular.

According to Wisegeek, in order for a drunken noodle dish to be legitimate, it must contain Thai basil, although Holy basic is more common and traditional and sweet basil is also used. Vinegar, sugar, and oyster sauce is also sometimes addend.

There’s a lot of debate regarding where the name comes from. Wisegeek says that ”most people say that the name of the meal refers to the spiciness it tends to have, making diners heavily drink to combat the heat.”

Wiki Answers writes:

No one is sure where the name of this dish comes from. Some believe it is called drunken noodles because it’s an excellent hangover cure. Others believe that it is so hot that the eater has to be drunk to be able to stand it, while some are sure that it’s because one becomes drunk trying to drown out the heat with alcohol. Still others believe that the name comes from the wide assortment of ingredients the dish contains: The chef is drunk enough to throw in a bunch of vegetables and spices without thinking it over. The most probable explanation is that this is one of the only foods available on the streets of Thailand late at night and in the very early morning, the times when inebriated revelers are leaving places of celebration. It is very possible that the extremely “wobbly” noodles themselves give the dish its name.

The Washington Post  has recently done some critics of the popular restaurant, X.O. Taste. As a result, I checked it out for myself. On a Saturday night, it was full with both Asian and American diners, with people waiting outside the restaurant for a seat. The restaurant is bright and open with large round wooden tables and modern/unusual lighting and bright wall colors, giving it an urban vibe. There seemed to be one waiter working the whole restaurant, which was pretty amazing considering the number of people eating. Inside, many large families and groups of people were eating. The round tables have a clear glass lazy Susan on them, making them ideal for family style dining. The restaurant itself was noisy and informal.

The menu was large and diverse. This place bears no resemblance to the normal Chinese restaurants here. There was no Orange Chicken and the only item that came close was Hot and Sour Soup (apparently part of Beijing cuisine). We had to ask the waiter about virtually all the dishes we considered ordering to get a clearer idea about what they were – even something like Sizzling Beef with Black Pepper seemed mysterious. The menu is enormous and overwhelming, serving congee (a type of savory rice porridge), noodle dishes, casseroles, soups, etc. and all varieties and makes of meat, everything from pork, chicken, sea cucumber, the infamous Dungeness crab, tofu, frog, duck tongue, etc. It is safe to say that all meats and parts are fair game. There was also a large range of sea food, which seems to be due to the influence of Chiu Chow cuisine that favors duck, goose, and seafood. Luckily, the waiter was friendly and patient with us. Hong Kong cuisine is strongly Cantonese influenced. They use chopsticks primarily, but at X.O. we were also given a small fork. The type of cooking seemed to be less focused on breading and frying and more on pan frying and steaming.

While drinking tea and deliberating over the menu, we ultimately became overwhelmed with all the dishes and instead tried to order a variety of meats. At X.O. Taste, they serve each dish as they come out (at record speed!) rather than all at once, ensuring that everything is hot and fresh.

Two dishes we ordered were Siu Mei (a style of Chinese rotisserie consisting only of meat). The first that came out was Baby Roast Pig, listed under Hong Kong Style Marinated and BBQ. This dish is served only in the evenings (banquet/dinner style) and only on weekends. We wanted to try the duck and pork because these are Hong Kong specialties, and because they display them on hooks at the front of the restaurant. The pork was surprisingly served cold with a crispy exterior, a layer of fat, and then the meat below it. The pork was marinated and very rich, probably due to the large amount of fat (even though the waiter said that the Baby Pig is less fatty than the adult Pig). The meat was tender and the marinade had a good flavor.

Next came Roast Duck on Rice, which was very tender and delicious. They served the meat in a layer of skin, meat, and bone, which through me off at first because I’m used to the bone being removed. The marinade had a slightly sweet taste and the dish was served warm.

Next they served Sizzling Steak in Black Pepper, which was indeed served sizzling. The meat had a good flavor but was a little tough for our vision of steak and very soft (not sizzled to crispiness).

The final dish that came was Tofu Stuffed with Shrimp Paste and Black Bean Sauce. I love tofu so this one was delicious to me. Large chunks of tofu had shrimp placed on them and them were fried so the outside was crispy and the inside was soft. The sauce was savory. This dish is a typical example of Hong Kong cuisine.

We also ordered Buddha’s Delight, another typical vegetarian Chinese dish, however due a mix-up the dish never came. The waiter said it was still in the kitchen, but ultimately it may or may not have been given to the table next to us. Luckily, the staff was polite and took it off the bill.

Afterwards, they served a complimentary dessert. It resembled tapioca pudding but was thinned to be a soup like texture and tasted instead like a warm sweet soup with pureed mung bean at the bottom. This type of dessert is called tong sui, translated to “sugar water.” There are apparently many varieties of tong sui, but this type of dessert is exclusive to Hong Kong/Cantonese cuisine and not served in other regions.

Obviously, more work is required to sample all of Hong Kong cuisine. Dim sum is a major part of it, which they don’t serve at X.O. Taste. Also, we didn’t sample any congee, seafood, or the casseroles. Or even the infamous XO sauce, which apparently is named after cognac and developed during the 1980s in Hong Kong. According to Wikipedia , the sauce is spicy and “served with seafood containing roughly chopped dried seafood, such as scallop, dried fish and shrimp that has been cooked with chili, onion, garlic and oil.”

Total: $61, excluding tip for four entrees. Most of the dishes are around $10.