Hot pot from a Mongolian perspective

Having successfully negotiated a taxi ride back to town, we found ourselves in Haila'er with a couple of hours to spare before our flight to Beijing. Time for some of that vaunted Mongolian Hot Pot!

The internet proved useful, though in a roundabout way. Venturing to our free WiFi corner once more, we located a couple of hot pot restaurants on Google Maps, not two blocks away from us. We walked towards them...but the first was not to be found. We did locate the second, but its emptiness, scattering of used refrigerators open to the air, and general grunginess did not entice us to go inside.

However! We did pass a nice looking, apparent hot pot place that Google Maps had neglected. We went inside. Thanks, Google Maps!

Ordering was straightforward, as the menu had pictures and we knew the concept. Soon, plates of food, with side dishes, appeared.

The five small side dishes included peanuts, green chillies, chilli paste, blanched garlic, and pickled onion. The peanuts and the chilli paste saw the most use, with the peanuts serving as palate cleansers and the chilli paste taking the broth up a couple of notches.

On the non-veg side of the meal, we got two cuts of lamb. One was sliced thinly and a bit like lamb prosciutto. The other was a rough chop and left thick little strips of lamb. Alas, and why oh why, but the meat was not good. Gamey, gamey, gamey, with the thick strips being, to me at least, inedible.

But they were more than saved by the delicious vegetables and fungus. The mixed mushroom plate contained enoki, shiitake, king trumpets, and several unidentifiable but delicious varieties. They were joined on a separate sampler plate by spinach, more enokis, and lettuce. All of it was scrumptious, and so different from each other. The enokis were lovely because of the snap to their bite. The long and shaggy mushrooms second from the back were richly flavored and very earthy. The spinach and lettuce soaked up delectable flavors from the broth and parlayed them into my mouth. Yum, yum, yum.

After an hour of sitting next to our individual hot pots and eating many things from them soaked in chillies, I was sweating profusely, one of those great sweats that cools you down and makes you healthy. Viva Hot Pot!