Local plates, global bites

No need to explain

On a Friday evening in October, the dining room is busy. Several groups of non-Chinese diners are gathered around the pots alongside Chinese customers.

Ruben Feng Feng, one of Mt. ShooTao's servers, speaks English, Spanish, Cantonese and Mandarin. He often explains the broths, ingredients and cooking methods to customers who are unfamiliar with hotpot.

But he has also learned not to assume that a non-Chinese customer needs much explanation.

Many New Yorkers, he says, have broad experience with food from different cultures. Some handle chopsticks as comfortably as he does. Often, a short explanation is enough before they begin cooking for themselves.

Chinese food hardly needs an introduction in the city. What has changed is how much more specific that broad label can now be.

Veteran New York restaurant critic Robert Sietsema, who has chronicled the city's Chinese dining scene for decades, told China Daily that by 2000, New Yorkers could find restaurants serving food from Yunnan, Henan, Hunan, Shaanxi and Shanghai, as well as Taiwan and Xinjiang.

Sichuan food, in Sietsema's view, has proved particularly popular. But he draws an important distinction between the popularity of Sichuan cuisine and that of hotpot.

Dishes such as mapo tofu, laziji (chicken stir-fried with heaps of dried chilies) and dan dan noodles have become familiar enough, he says, that versions can now be found even at older Chinese-American neighborhood restaurants. Hotpot, however, has not traveled quite as easily.

"Americans have not taken to hotpots the way Chinese people have done," Sietsema says. Many diners, he argues, prefer their Sichuan food to arrive at the table already cooked rather than having to cook ingredients themselves in a communal pot.

Sietsema counts himself among the skeptics. He loves Sichuan food — "the spicier and oilier the better", he says — but finds hotpot less appealing because diners have to keep track of ingredients in the broth and retrieve them before they overcook.

For some diners, however, cooking at the table is precisely the attraction. Hudson Orr, who lives in Manhattan's Hamilton Heights neighborhood, is visiting Mt. ShooTao for the first time with friends, including Riah, a Brooklyn resident who has been there before.

"The hot pot experience, that's the whole point!" Orr says when asked whether he enjoys cooking the food himself. "That's why we come, is the cooking yourself." He describes cooking noodles in tomato broth before moving them to the spicy side for an extra kick. For him, hotpot is also "a community event with your friends".

Riah agrees that cooking the food is part of the pleasure. She favors the spicy broth and its tingling heat, and describes Mt. ShooTao as a "go-to spot".

Rahul, another New Yorker, has eaten hotpot about five times but is visiting Mt. ShooTao for the first time. What appeals to him is the freedom to combine different meats, ingredients and dipping sauces. "There's so many things that you can mix and match for yourself to your own taste," he says, calling it "a pretty unique experience".

A second test

The bet is no longer confined to West 35th Street.

Fang and Wang are now exploring a second Mt. ShooTao location in Long Island City, Queens, where they are in discussions over a potential restaurant space.

The move turns what had been an expansion plan into a more immediate reality. The Midtown restaurant sits among offices, hotels and tourist traffic near Herald Square. Long Island City offers a different setting, with a larger neighborhood and residential component.

The partners hope to open the new restaurant in the coming months.

The second restaurant will offer another test — not simply of how far Sichuan flavors can travel, but of how many New Yorkers want to gather around the pot and cook for themselves.