Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Hotpot Little Lamb Restaurant

Little Lamb Restaurant
小肥羊内蒙古火锅
36-35 Main St.
Flushing, NY 11354
(718) 358-6667

Setup
The place to go for hotpots. Great for groups of 3 or more. The round tables come with a depressed center where the hotpot will go. This way is better than a pot on top of the table, since the pot will be lower and provides easier access to food.

Soup Base
Spicy soup base, non-spicy herbal soup base, yin-yang soup base (a divided pot featuring a spicy side and a non-spicy side. Unless you absolutely cannot take spicy food, try the yin-yang pot for the best of both worlds. I believe the spicy soup base includes sichuan hot pepper, which has a nice numbing effect.

Dipping Sauce
Most things are fine after soaking up the soup base, but sauces are still essential. The sauce bar is in the back, with various ingredients. If you get confused with all the choices (about 20 or so?), just stick with basic sesame sauce and chive sauce (great for lamb). I like to add some cilantro myself. Other choices include minced garlic, ginger, chili pepper sauces, peanut sauce, scallion, vinegar, soy sauce, etc.

Orders
meat
-beef and lamb are best bets. I'm never a huge fan of pork in either BBQ or hotpot since it takes longer to cook and is not quite as tasty as beef or lamb.
veggie
-Chinese cabbage, bok-choy, taro, winter melon, bean sprouts, watercress (my favorite).
other
-enoki (golden mushroom, 金针菇), thin and thick clear noodles (mung bean), frozen tofu (spongy and soakes up flavor).

1 comment:

|suhxie| said...

omg. that's a chain in the prc. i ate there this summer in qingdao. hella good hotpot. i ate way too many oysters.