Description
Japanese shabu shabu, which you may have had, is foreplay compared to Mongolian Hot Pot. Little Sheep’s hot pot is the fetishist level of DIY cooking. Here you encounter not just the standard bearers of sliced beef, lamb, chicken and pork, but also the decidedly kinkier diversions of tripe, tendon, blood cake, goose intestines and pork kidneys. The rest of the players are a breathless list of vegetables, more meats in different grades of fattiness, dumplings, seafood, noodles, meat balls, six varieties mushrooms and everything else you might conceivably want to cook on your own in a roiling vat of soup. Your clothes will be perfumed from your Mongolian hot pot as your stomach will be distended of it. The tendency to overeat is overwhelming and this isn’t even an all-you-can-eat as other Mongolian hot pot establishments in our area are. Beginners would do very well in just ordering the set meal box for $14.95, which is offered at all times except at dinner on Saturdays and Sundays. The artfully arranged bento container includes the essentials of one choice of meat, a few slices of cod that boil into delicate tender flakes, a sampler’s selection of meatballs, four slices of frozen sponge tofu, their toothsome house noodles, and all the vegetables you need. The boil will turn the daikon into softness, the bundle of enoki mushrooms into soggy mops, and the weed-like greens called ton ho into something that tastes like a peppery cross between green beans and spinach.
