Mr Wang Hot Pot. It feels like cheating. Brighton 25.6.25.

 

Mr Wang Hot Pot. It feels like cheating. Brighton. 25.6.25.

 60 Queen’s Road,

Brighton BN1 3XD.

 

 

Now I know I’m meant to be writing a food blog set in London  Soho/ Chinatown but for a whole host of reasons, I need to write about somewhere else from time to time. These Taiwanese hotpot restaurants have been popping up like heat rash on a blazing summer day and I’ve always viewed them with some suspicion. It’s part of the current trend of East Asian food joints popping up in the UK. I would say that Britain has had a long love affair with Indian food (and long may it continue) but the East Asian thing is new. Growing up in Singapore, Chinese food and its local variants were mainstay. One of things that I ate growing up in Singapore was steamboat. The family sit around a table with the centre cut out. There is a cauldron filled with boiling stock into which various raw ingredients are unceremoniously dumped. Pieces of meat, fish, vegetables and whatnot. The stock is tasty and gets progressively richer and tastier. Anyway, that’s the theory. I admit that I’ve never been too found of steamboat. It always struck me as a hot humid horrific mess. Singapore is a hot country, a really hot country and the logic of sitting in front of a boiling cauldron always escaped me. To be clear, the food wasn’t bad and I wasn’t traumatised by eating it. It just felt like way too much effort for a poor return culinary wise.

 

 

So we come to Mr Wang’s hotpot. Three choices of base stock. Think my friend and I both chose the original Ox Bone stock.  There’s a wall of shelves filled with little grey plastic containers with a huge selection of options.  There’s a variety of greens, meats, tofu, eggs etc to choose from. You pay by the weight. We made our selections, the whole mess got cooked and we ate it. The stock was tasty, the bits and pieces we chose were properly cook. No stock remained in our individual ceramic pots. We left with full stomachs. But the foodie in me felt dissatisfied. I want the cook to make the choices of ingredients. Whether it’s steak and frites or a fish pie, I want her to decide on what goes into a dish, what meats, what veggies, which spices. You want that serendipitous moment when you step into an unprepossessing little shop and got shocked by something entirely unexpected. Maybe it’s a new interpretation of an old dish, maybe a novel new dish, or even something entirely unexpected. A hot pot restaurant where you dunk stuff into a boiling hot cauldron of stock just feels like an abdication of a chef’s responsibility to make the critical choices.

 

 

At times like this, I always wonder – what would the late Anthony Bourdain have made of it? I’ve seen enough of his programs to say with some confidence that he would have been generous warm and empathetic. He would have been totally at peace with the idea that the customer chose everything. He would have been delighted that it was inexpensive and accessible. So ignore this grouch and go have a good time.

 

Total Bill came to £34.89 for two including a couple of soft drinks.