Regardless of the complexity and myriad of culinary choices we have in Oxfordshire, novelty is still a hard thing to come by.
So news that Mr Wang Hot Pot has opened on Gloucester Green in Oxford, offering an entirely unique form of dining, hugely piqued our interest.
The tenth branch to open, it really is an entirely unique experience from start to finish, like taking part in a challenge, because you have to learn the rules before you can participate, and the fun and games start as soon as you arrive.
Mr Wang Hot Pot is a minimalist site, aesthetically pared back, geared up for multiple customers rather than extended meals, white plastic tables awaiting. But the colour and interest is provided by the refrigerators full of ingredients covering an entire wall.
Handed a green plastic tray on arrival – its a bit like the Masterchef Kitchen – check out all the tasty looking products from fish and meat to veg, tofu and noodles stretching as far as the eye can see, pick your favourites and place them in your basket to create the tastiest dish possible.
The premise is that you then choose your broth base at the counter, hand over your ingredients, sit back and wait while it’s cooked to order in the kitchen.
A small white bowl is also provided for the ‘condiment station’ where everything from peanut crumb to sesame crunch, chilli oil, spring onions, herbs and spices await with which to elevate your hot pot further.
Which does beg the question, what is a hot pot (Lancashire aside)? Mr Wang’s interpretation is a slightly bastardised version of Malatang, a popular dish in China that translates as ‘hot and spicy in a bowl’, which is much more of a communal dining experience, where a simmering pot of flavoured broth is placed in the centre of the table, and diners cook the raw ingredients by immersing them in the broth. Once cooked, the food is dipped into personalized sauces before being eaten.Â
So this is the same but different, more geared to the general public – here you can dine alone, or in groups, without the communality. Mr Wang’s is more practical perhaps and less inclusive, but still an interesting concept.
And while it may sound straight forward, the tables laid with ladles and chopsticks, order numbers provided, it’s actually rather a time consuming endeavour. What to pick for a start? When faced with so many varieties of say mushrooms, noodles, Chinese vegetables, offal, spicy beef, fish balls and prawns, and other things you need an encyclopaedia to decipher, it’s quite a challenge!
There is, to be fair, an enticing rice bowl menu for those who don’t want to play ball, but the majority of customers concentrate on the hot pots. Queueing up one by one and handing over our trays of goodies to be weighed, it was a bit like being back at school. Given a number, you then collect your condiments, which you can either use as a dip or add to the entire dish, and wait.
Arriving literally bubbling in thick black stock pots, it’s like eating out of a mini cauldron, and can’t be attempted until its cooled down a bit. And that’s where ones dexterity comes to the fore, because despite being armed with a ladle and chopsticks, it’s still like taking part in a wrestling match, trying to manoeuvre the slithers of Chinese cabbage and spinach, noodles and moist cuts of meat and fish into your mouth required a considerable skillset.
I think the Chinese would have had a field day watching us grappling away, but we persevered, buoyed up by the intense flavour and evident enjoyment contained in each and every mouthful.
The portions are hugely generous, affordable, (ours averaged between £9-£11 per hot pot), easily sharable, and almost impossible to finish – we ended up taking the remainders home – but more importantly it couldn’t have been more flavoursome, fun and novel if we’d tried. Whether you chose the spicy, milky, bone, tomato or hot and sour varieties, they all sang. But the process itself was as original as the flavours.
No fine dining here, but in terms of novelty, its a brilliant way to turn fast food on its head and bring something new to the table, literally.
Mr Wang Hot Pot is at 95 Gloucester Green, Oxford OX1 2DF. You can’t book but it’s open Monday to Thursday from 12 noon to 9pm, and Friday to Sunday from 12 noon to 9.30pm. More info here: https://www.mrwanghotpot.co.uk/contact
