Spicing things up

Even the most popular restaurants feel pressure to refresh their menus. Haidilao will offer new dishes, and plans to update its offerings often, Liu Zhihua finds at a tasting.

China's largest hotpot restaurant chain recently announced it would update its main menu every three months starting from June, reflecting the fact that diners now have a much shorter attention span about new dishes, even though they are devoted to classics.

Haidilaou Hotpot - whose restaurants are hits for their service and delicious Sichuan-style hotpots - organized a grand tasting event for hundreds of loyal customers earlier this month. Guests were invited to sample and rate 20 new dishes and two new soups. It was the first time that Haidilao has held such a customer tasting party since it opened its first branch in Mianyang, in Sichuan province, in 1994.

Among the offerings at the tasting event are cow marrow, boar belly, boar leg, peanut sprout, asparagus and venison that are unusual in a hotpot restaurant.

Vegetarian options include some of my favorites on the new menu - surprises such as black corn, arrowhead tubers, and so-called "purple cabbage" (a hybrid of Chinese cabbage and red kraut), and vegetarian "baodu", or beef triple, a classic meat dish in Sichuan-style hotpot, this version made from beans.

There are also innovative desserts, including mushroom-shaped steamed buns, walnut-shaped steamed buns, and taro porridge.

All the dishes were created to achieve a balance between taste and nutrition, the company says, because customers have become increasingly aware of food safety and nutrition.

Haidilao has established its own supply chain with strict quality controls, from supplier selection, ingredient-quality checking, cold-chain transportation and storage, and storage management.

All ingredients for the new dishes are organic, so the vegetables are free of pesticides and fertilizers, an executive with the company's research and development department told me.

It was difficult to decide which one was my favorite, except that it wasn't the walnut-shaped steamed buns stuffed with walnut, which were too sweet for me.

The vegetables, including peanut sprouts, pea seedlings, asparagus and black corn, all had distinctive aromas and flavors. On the plate, they were all very fresh and crunchy, except for the arrowhead tubers, which were soft and had a hint of sweetness.

Except the pea seedlings, other vegetables are not only rare in a hotpot kitchen but boast great nutritional value - rich in vitamins, dietary fibers, and vegetable protein. In China, the peanut bud is also called "longevity bud".

Among the meat dishes, I just could not stop having more of the cow marrow, yu yang xian (mutton and fish meat pressed together), boar belly, boar leg and goose intestine.

The cow marrow had a very tender and meaty texture when briefly boiled in the spicy hotpot soup, and tasted extraordinarily flavorful when eaten with dried chili powder.

The yu yang xian, literally "fish, mutton, umami", is a mixture of raw catfish meat and cooked mutton, and tasted very "umani" and chewy.

The boar meat contains little fat but has collagen. The belly meat was more tender than the leg meat, while skin on the leg meat maintained its firm texture, even after being boiled in the soup for a few minutes. Both dishes were very savory, having a distinctive flavor from other breeds of pigs.

Goose intestines are a classic hotpot dish in Sichuan province, but are less common in Beijing than duck intestines. When boiled a few seconds (Haidilao suggests eight to 15 seconds), goose intestines will be crunchy; if boiled longer, they get chewy.

Among the desserts, my favorite was fried shredded taro, which was beautifully presented and very delicious.

The two new soups were the fish-flavor spicy soup and the soup of three chili flavors. The new choices are designed for people who want a change, since the soup is the most important ingredient in a hotpot restaurant - the foundation for the flavors of a hotpot.

The restaurant chain has also launched a program to allow customers with membership of its branches to order personalized hotpot soups with their favorite flavors.

Contact the writer at liuzhihua@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 05/17/2016 page19)