New York City was riding off a summer high of outdoor dining, the warm weather injecting a jolt of life in a city that was the world’s COVID-19 epicenter back in March 2020. And the pandemic that wholly prevents the kind of group gathering hot pot so clearly beckons. The pandemic that ravaged the hospitality industry. The pandemic that, at its onset, resulted in the ugly and racist boycott of Chinatowns across the world. See, I fell in love with hot pot in the middle of the pandemic. I’ll take baskets upon baskets of dim sum, a whole suckling pig, and the king crab cooked three ways, anytime.īut that very much changed this fall. But in the Asian world of shared family-style feasts, hot pot scores very low on my list. Still, I was not convinced.ĭon’t get me wrong, there are certain aspects of hot pot I love - the communal gathering, the DIY cooking, the fanfare of it all. I’m pretty sure every family trip we took to Taiwan involved a distant relative bringing us to their favorite local spot, from Taipei to Tainan. There was the shabu shabu place my Boston college friends swore by, and all of the hottest Chongqing-style imports I tested out with delighted expats in Manhattan’s Chinatown. There were the hot pot gatherings of my youth, at Chinese restaurants tucked away in Paris’ 9ème arrondissement. LAOJIE // All you can eat hot pot with a proper sauce station, and artist Stephanie Shih’s favorite in Sunset Park.886 // The East Village’s rollicking ode to modern Taiwanese fare, hot pot included.SICHUAN HOT POT // The game-changing hot pot in Manhattan's Chinatown.SHABU TATSU // Little Tokyo’s preeminent shabu shabu go-to, since 1991.“We can no longer use the old formula just to hire a good chef and run restaurants today,” said Christine, whose family owned restaurants in San Francisco. From a nightclub, to a bar, to a bubble tea shop, they couldn’t make the businesses work. Why the decision to lease to Little Sheep? When Christine and Tim Lee moved from San Francisco and took over the 30-year-old Ocean City Restaurant five years ago from their family, they struggled to run the restaurant. His plan is to open hundreds of branch restaurants in America. When asked why he didn’t buy the property of Ocean City (it was listed for sale two years ago), Zhang said his plan is to invest in restaurants, not properties. Zhang said his dream is to expand to a few hundred restaurants in North America. We have the foundation to achieve all our goals.” This is the restaurant, which integrates Chinese culture and food. Our beef and vegetables are fine ingredients. You feel the good vibes in the restaurant. “Our décor is different, spacious, and comfortable. “We are unique,” said George Jiao, Little Sheep’s vice president. Chinatown has a large number of Chinese visitors and residents.”īut Chinatown already has existing hot pot restaurants. “We try to find places where Chinese people congregate. So why Chinatown? “Our hot pot is very popular among Chinese,” said Golden Zhang, chairman of the Little Sheep North America International Group, who made the trip from China for the restaurant’s grand opening on Oct. It is called Mongolian Hot Pot, because the founder is Mongolian, one of the 56 minority tribes in China.Ĭhristine Lee, left, George Jiao, third from left, Golden Zhang, sixth from left, and other guests at the grand opening (Photo by George Liu/NWAW) Its flagship restaurant in Beijing occupies a grand four-story building and can accommodate thousands of diners. ![]() In North America, there are over 30 branches. It gave the building a facelift, and will also serve as Little Sheep’s headquarters.Ī huge chain in China, Little Sheep has grown globally with over 200 branch restaurants. and a two-story space from the Ocean City Restaurant. Little Sheep’s management has invested almost $2 million to lease 11,000 sq. Instead, they picked Seattle’s Chinatown/International District to build its biggest restaurant in North America.Ĭhinese hot pot is like fondue, but you don’t dip into cheese or chocolate, but boil meats and vegetables in soup. ![]() But Little Sheep Mongolian Hot Pot, which opened its first restaurant in Bellevue in 2011, decided to take a different path. The Eastside is considered as the next step for expansion for much of Seattle Chinese business development. Lately, the trend for successful Chinese businesses has been to head to the Eastside and forget Chinatown. Dragon/lion dancers celebrate opening (Photo by George Liu/NWAW)
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