Nation warms to hotpot in all seasons

Diners relish wide variety of styles

Zhou Yaxuan, 22, is a fan of the Beijing hotpot restaurant Wangjiadu. She said she especially likes it in winter, and she's a big fan on the restaurant's sesame sauce, which has the consistency of ice cream.

Zhou, an accountant, said she also likes the eatery's fresh tripe and tries to remember the waiters' instructions to dip the organ meat up and down in the steaming liquid seven times to get it done just right.

The tripe Zhou had recently came out crisp and tender, in part because it had arrived fresh in Beijing that day from the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.

Thanks to advances in logistics, transportation and cold-storage technology, hotpot is no longer a seasonal choice, but can be enjoyed throughout the year in China. Faster delivery services and more do-it-yourself options mean it is now being eaten more frequently.

Last year, the country's hotpot market reached 875.7 billion yuan ($125.2 billion), one-fifth of the total catering sector, according to the China Restaurant Industry Survey released by the China Hospitality Association in July. Since 2014, the hotpot market has grown by more than 50 percent.

Of all hotpot restaurants in China, 57 percent focus on cuisine from Sichuan province and Chongqing, according to a report on diners' preferences released in October by online food delivery and ticketing services platform Meituan Dianping.

Hotpot served in these restaurants features either an authentic spicy soup base or chuan chuan, where the ingredients are placed on a skewer to boil in the soup.

Wang Kun, brand manager for the Wangjiadu hotpot chain in Beijing, said it is bringing the authentic taste of Sichuan to the capital, with the aim of attracting a white-collar clientele.

In addition to the beef tallow soup base from the province, special pork luncheon meat and fresh tripe are popular at the chain's restaurants.

"Each season, we bring in traditional ingredients from Sichuan to Beijing－including bamboo in springtime and freshwater fish in the autumn," Wang said.

"The sesame sauce is our specialty and includes dried shrimp and stewed mushroom."

Chuan chuan hotpot restaurants are favored by the younger generation. They are usually cheaper than those offering Sichuan hotpot, and evolved from roadside food stalls.