Authentic Hotpot Restaurants from China
Recently, many authentic Chinese hotpot restaurants were opened in Japan. I highly recommend travelers or local people to at least have a try, especially if you think you have a strong spicy taste. Many owners make their sites on Ueno, and some are opened in Ikebukuro.
In general, newly opened Chinese hotpot restaurants are chain stores. Their headquarters are located in China and they move their branches to Japan, especially in City of Tokyo.
In this article, I would like to introduce the Chinese hotpot culture. Also I can recommend some good Chinese hotpot restaurants in Tokyo. At last, I can analysis why authentic Chinese hotpots can success in Tokyo.
Hotpot culture of China
China is very big and different areas may have different style of hotpot. The most three popular hotpots are Beijing Style, Mongolian Style and Szechuan Style. Canton pot is also very good, but it is very difficult to get one.
Beijing Style:
is not quite soup oriented. Actually they just put water in the pot. The taste of soup could be made by cooking the meat. Also their pot is very special, in the middle of the pot, there is a kind of chimney-like top. Typically, people just eat prepared lamb or beef and vegetables. Also they need a lot of sources such as peanut source to make food delicious. Here is an example image from wikimedia.
Mongolian Style:
In comparison with Beijing Style, Mongolian Style hotpot focused more on the taste of soup. Also, they have made the pot into two halves. One is for spicy soup and another one is for non-spicy soup. As for non-spicy soup, they put many herbs and the soup taste extremely delicious. The best thing for Mongolian hot pot is that you don't need to rely on source too much since their soup can make the food very delicious after they have been cooked. Also people enjoy having the soup while enjoy the food. Here is an example from wikimedia.
Szechuan Style:
Szechuan food is famous for their spicy taste, the hotpot is also like this. They have a very special pot called nine-grid. They try to divide the pot into 9 parts and each part is very spicy. Definitely, you can choose two half pot and make one half not very spicy but you will not enjoy the essence of Szechuan Style at all. The pure Szechuan Style is not very friendly for non-spicy foodies, especially the foreigners.
In addition to the extreme taste, the food will be different. Szechuan Style hot pot tries to put everything into the pot. For example, the stomach of cow, frog or even pig's brain. It is quite unacceptable for Westerners but to be honest, it is really delicious with the soup.
We can see an example here from Wikimedia.
Some Recommendations for authentic Chinese hotpot in Tokyo
Here are some of my personal recommendations for restaurants with different styles of hotpot. Please check if you like it before you go:
Szechuan Style:
Most of authentic restaurants belong to this category. As for myself, I think 山城辣妹子( Sorry I don't even know how to translate this name) is a top pick. Last month, our R&D group's Chinese colleagues went there for a team build. Here are some images that they have taken. Also the top image of this blog is also taken there. These images are taken by my colleague Zhao Chen.
Here is their tabelog info:
Here are some other similar restaurants:
Mongolian Style:
One thing that you need to pay attention is that, as for chain store little lamb (小尾羊） and little sheep （小肥羊）, you have to contact with their owner for details. Many of the branches are sold to Japanese owners and some owners have changed they style into Shabushabu. They are very still delicious but they are Japanese-Chinese mix.
Beijing Style:
There are not too many of them opened in Tokyo. I only have found two in Tokyo. The best thing is that they can give you a lot of meat with cheap price.
Canton Style:
Though we rarely go to Cantonese restaurant for hotpot, I highly recommend one.
OK. This is the end of this article. When writing the article, I am becoming increasingly hungry and now I am going to eat hot pot!