Hot pot

I grew up in Guangdong. The family is Chongqing. This is a known conflict. Guangdong wants the food to taste like itself. Chongqing wants the food to argue with you. At a table I am not a diplomat.

Proper hot pot, for me, is a well of oil that has been convinced to carry chili, Sichuan pepper, and enough other things that the first spoonful is a fact, not a suggestion. Numbness is not a side effect. It is the point. If the broth is “spicy” in the American way — a red color that does not follow you home — it is soup.

Seattle has tried. I have also tried, which is not the same as succeeding. If you know a place that does not apologize for the heat, you should tell me. I will take the recommendation more seriously than most emails about neural networks, which is saying something.

This page exists so that the word hot pot on the homepage has somewhere to go. It will probably stay this short. Some subjects do not improve with theory.