Hot Pot!

Dad’s been on a business trip in Taiwan since last week; he’s been sending us pictures of all the delicious food he’s been eating!  We were getting a little jealous, and finally my mom decided to take us out to dinner at a Taiwanese restaurant she’d heard about in San Gabriel Valley.  After driving around and using my phone’s GPS to find the place, we arrived to discover that it was...closed.  

My mom decided to try a different Taiwanese restaurant nearby that she remembered going to.  It was located in a plaza that we go to all the time for vegetarian Chinese cuisine, but we hadn’t really been to any of the other restaurants there in a while.  As it turned out, the last time my mom had been to the Taiwanese restaurant was years ago—and the restaurant closed down recently.

As we were headed back to the car, we noticed a Mongolian Hot Pot restaurant called Little Sheep.  I’ve always been a fan of Mongolian BBQ, and we occasionally make our own hot pot at home, so we decided to try it out.

I can assure you it tastes a lot better than it looks.

Basically, you order a bunch of meat and vegetables to be cooked in a giant pot of hot broth; everyone has a bowl to mix their own sauces in (I like to mix hot sauce, soy sauce, and garlic sauce), and then you dip the meat/vegetables in the sauce.  My new favorite is taro—it takes a while to cook and soften, but it’s delicious.

Taro (yum!) and some other vegetables to cook in the hot pot.

At the end, you can even mix some of the broth in with your sauce and drink it that way.  It’s a fantastic way to enjoy a meal with a group of people.

...Not so much with just 3 people (me, my mom, and my sister).  We ate a little too much and spent a little too much.  Still worth it.