Roselle's new Hot Pot Delight an extraordinary feast for the senses
Sit down, turn up the heat and soak in the simmering, brothy goodness. If you haven't experienced hot pot dining yet, then you may want to treat your senses to something that may be new to you but has a history dating back several hundred years.
I recently pointed my car toward Roselle to check out Hot Pot Delight near Meacham and Nerge Roads. Nestled in a suburban strip mall between a Mexican restaurant and a nail salon, Hot Pot Delight specializes in the ancient cooking method of preparing food in a heated pot of soup broth. If you are new to hot pot, think of it as a cross between fondue (without the cheese) and dim sum dining, where the sounds of silver kettle pots sizzling on electric heat tiles mingle with fragrant aromas wafting through the dining room.
There are several different types of hot pot cooking styles that are linked to a variety of East Asian cultures. Hot Pot Delight focuses on Chinese cuisine, with one of the more popular forms known as Chongqing hot pot cooking.
After my dining companion and I sat down at a cushy red vinyl booth in the narrow dining room, our server greeted us and explained how ordering off the menu works. First, you pick the type of soup broth you'd like to have boiling in your tabletop kettle. For this lunch visit, our choices were original bone marrow broth, spicy bone marrow broth and a third option called Best of Both Worlds. We picked the last one in order to try both broths. Shortly after ordering, a silver kettle arrived with a divider in the middle so both broths could cook separately.
A note to vegetarians: You may want to ask for a different type of soup base if you'd prefer not to cook with a marrow broth. And don't worry, there are plenty of vegetarian options.
The appetizer section of the menu features several starters, including beef and chicken skewers, fried chicken wings, pot stickers, and shredded spicy potato and savory green onion pancakes. On the main menu, there are dozens of entrees featuring meat, chicken, fish, tofu noodles and vegetables for dunking into the boiling broth. You also get a choice of food shapes and textures, such as beef tendon meatballs, cuttle fish balls, house dumplings, and a couple of different fish and shrimp pastes. In watching what diners at other tables did, I noticed some throwing everything into the broth at once while more patient eaters chose to dunk one dish or one item at a time. It's all about your preference of what you want to cook and for how long.
We chose three dishes for broth dunking: Udon noodles, fish filet slices and soft tofu. Shortly after we ordered, all three came to our table on gleaming white plates with small soup bowls, a set of tongs and ladles, and garlic and hot dipping sauces. Half of everything went into both sides of our kettle so we could sample them in the spicy and non-spicy broths.
Everything we ordered tasted fantastic, in both the spicy and non-spicy broth. Cooking the items all at once provided more of a “hearty stew” experience of flavors and textures. That combined with the sizzle of the broth, the smell emanating from our kettle and the whole interactive nature of using our hands to cook and serve enhanced our entire experience.
It didn't feel like we had ordered a lot of food - our original thought was that we'd start small and order more. But by the time we finished every piece of fish, cube of tofu and soaked noodle, we were in no condition to order dessert, which includes fried buns, classic flan and churros.
There's a wide variety of fruit smoothies to choose from off the drink menu, along with a selection of wines by the glass and beers on tap or by the bottle.
If you are really hungry, you can opt for the all-you-can-eat menu featuring all the food you can dunk and chow down in two hours for $23.99 per person. However, we ordered a-la-carte and definitely enjoyed a big lunch for a lower price.
Hot Pot Delight is worth checking out for the full experience. My advice is to come hungry, make sure you get plenty of napkins and venture out of your food comfort zone a bit by ordering a variety of menu items to see how they all come together in the simmering silver kettle.
Hot Pot Delight
859 E. Nerge Road, Roselle, (630) 283-3389, facebook.com/hotpotroselle/
<b>Cuisine:</b> Hot pot
<b>Setting:</b> Casual
<b>Hours:</b> 11:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday; 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday; noon to 9 p.m. Sunday
<i> Restaurant reviews are based on one anonymous visit. The Daily Herald does not publish reviews of restaurants it cannot recommend.</i>