Flushing Hotpot

Mapo Szechuan 陈麻婆
37-04 Prince Street, Flushing, NY

I’ve been to many hoptpot places in Flushing and found this “newish” place to be the best. Although they have other food, we always go here for hotpot so my review is all hotpot related.

Drinks
If you go, you should get a pitcher of draft to start with. They carry Sam Adams regular and seasonal, and some others on tap. Decent selection of bottled beers, too. Finally, you don’t have to settle for Tsingtao and/or Coors Light!

Soup base
I like both the chicken herbal soup base and the spicy soup base. Recently also tried a kelp based soup which was much lighter (for those of you not crazy about herbal soups and can’t take the spicy one)

Sauce/dip
Since the soup base is quite good to begin with, you don’t necessarily need to dip your food in the sauce. However, they do have a sauce/dip station in case you want it. I always end up getting the same:
sesame paste, chive paste, ginger, chilies, scallion, and a ton of cilantro.

Meats
Since I can’t seem to find the menu, I’ll just say that this place has a good variety of beef (more so than most hotpot places). Tripe is also delicious but easy to lose in the mix. Their lamb is great. I don’t usually get pork but someone actually ordered pork belly once and I found it rather yummy. Must be all the fat surrounding it…Not sure about chicken, but I don’t like chicken much anyway. We’ve also gotten the seafood platter which is ok but too much work to shell the shrimp. I rather get seafood elsewhere in a good seafood restaurant.

Veggies
They have a veggie platter that comes with pieces of Chinese cabbage, regular cabbage, and rice noodles. Tofu is decent too. There’s this fried breadstick thing that goes well in the spicy soup.

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).