So you want hot pot? Go to Peppers in Pembroke Pines. You heard me. Pembroke friggin Pines. WAY out there. But it's worth it.
For $20 a person you get a parade of raw ingredients to dip in steaming hot broth flecked with chilis, garlic and ginger. Thinly sliced lamb, crab legs, oysters, bok choy, sliced potatoes, fish, spinach, rice noodles, tofu skin. Plus a bevy of dipping sauces. The pot can be divided for vegetarians or for the less-spicyily inclined among us.
The last time I had hot pot I was in Beijing and the restaurant was crowded with hard-smoking Chinese workers shouting to each other over the steaming cauldrons at each table. Clean and bright it was not; discarded crab legs crunched beneath our feet when we walked in. It's also when I learned about hot-pot-in-the-eye. Put it this way, I don't advise peering into the pot when you drop in your ingredients. I spent half the dinner feeling like I got hit with pepper spray. But I kept going. And the tears came from the both the joy of the flavor explosions occurring and the possible corneal damage I had done.
But I digress. Back to Peppers.
If you go make sure to order off the Chinese menu, and there you'll find well-executed delicacies like garlic cucumber, beef with pickled peppers, stir-fried eggplant in a sweet garlic sauce and ma po fish, redolent with Sichuan peppercorns, black beans and chili oil.
9976 Pines Blvd. (954) 437-7738
