Yay for year two. This is a picture I took last year, and it came out horribly so I never used it. Thankfully there are no such standards this time around. My dog is also working on a few sketches that she would like to put on on this blog.
This photo is of a "hot pot" restaurant. Hot pot is a very popular food here, especially in the winter. The name is very accurate as all it really is is a pot of boiling water. No joke that's all it is.
So what does one do with this "hot pot?" Well at the restaurant you can choose between a variety of raw meats and vegetables, and they bring it to your table. You then put those things into the hot pot and wait for them to be cooked thoroughly before taking them out and eating them. Yep, you have to cook the food yourself.
I know what you are thinking..."So wait, you mean you go out to a restaurant to put food into a pot of hot water? Why would somebody even do that!?" You are forgetting that in Taiwanese culture you can't really have friends over to your house. So hot pot is essentially popular because it's considered a group activity. Friends will get together to here and sit and chat for a long time while the food is being cooked in the hot pot.
While it's mostly an excuse for friends to spend a long time together. It's also something very popular in the "winter" time. Hot pot places can be pretty vacant most of the year, but during the winter time they are packed with huge lines in front. This particular one is in my previous neighborhood and in winter evenings there is always a line around the block to get in. It's also right across a small alley from another hot pot restaurant which is never quite so busy. I usually say that "popular" means something is not as good, but in this case i must admit this one is actually better than the less popular one. Although....
...I'm not actually comparing the hot pot itself. I am comparing the ice cream. I am not really a fan of hot pot as i can't get what is good about it. Especially given that you can get much better quality meats from the market and then have your own hot pot at home. But I have grown to accept that when it comes to the foods people enjoy here, my palate is not so sensitive. It's hard for me to really tell the different between what is good or bad. Just like it's hard for most Taiwanese to tell the difference between a macdonald's hamburger and a good hamburger.
But I am an expert in ice cream, and one great feature of hot pot restaurants is that most of them have an all you can eat ice cream buffet. Depending on the level of the restaurant it could be anything from disgusting toilet ice cream, to soft serve, to haagen dazs.
Since hot pot places are so popular, and my friends love them, especially on cold days, I will usually go, but instead of eating the hot pot, i will just eat maybe ten or more large bowls of ice cream. So usually I will want to go to a place that has better quality ice cream. I'm not really a fan of Haagen Dazs, but there really isn't any good ice cream in Taiwan, so it's the best you can get. So spending the money on all you can eat haagen dazs is a steal. You'd actually be loosing money by eating something other than the ice cream!
