"Death in a Bowl:" Sichuan Hot Pot

While the diet of the Giant Panda of Sichuan is bland and rather restricted due to the pressures of its unique habitat, thankfully, the diet of the people of Chengdu is a different story. We had a chance to simple a small sample of its diversity and spiciness during lunch before our visit to the panda reserve. Dinner kicked the spice level up a notch further. My friend Sarah lamented afterwards that after a lunch that left her tongue on fire, she didn’t think things could get any worse. But then, at the Huo Guo or Hot Pot restaurant we went to for dinner, the servers brought out what Sarah said looked to her like “death in a bowl” (“death” being a broth that was basically concentrated essence of chili peppers), placed it in the center of the table, and lit the burner beneath to bring the contents of the “bowl of death” to a boil.

How does huo guo work? Once the soup in the center of the table came to a boil (which happened quite quickly), our servers started setting plate upon plate of raw ingredients around the hot pot. Every inch of free space on our table was soon filled up. First came raw mutton and various grades of beef, then (more to my liking) fresh squid and slices of a huge variety of vegetables and soon some tofu and noodles as well. There seemed to be two basic ways to work the pot:

1) Once a plate of food arrives, automatically dump its contents directly into the boiling broth (making sure to distribute things equitable between the safety zone soup in the center) and then, after giving it time to cook properly, diving after a piece with a pair of chopsticks. The problem with this method: the broth, being so thick and a blanket of bobbing chili peppers obstructing our view, made it impossible to tell what morsels were lurking beneath the boiling surface, resulting in food remaining un-retrieved for so long that it would overcook.

2) A free-for-all: each pair of chopsticks for themselves. This is what our table soon resorted to and it served us well. Those of us whose chopsticks dared to dive into the “bowl of death” ate well but were soon sporting red faces and runny noses from the extreme spice. After these two meals, a few of my classmates (Sarah among them) didn’t dare go near any pepper for the rest of the trip and, at times, had to resort to eating rice (some Sichuan restaurants didn’t have much of a selection of safe, non-spicy choices).