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Hotpot Heaven, a closer look
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A Garlic Lover checks
out Hotpot Heaven! |
 Nani-gurl on Hotpot Heaven! |
 Hotpot Heaven on Yelp! |
 Jo McGarry on Hotpot Heaven McCully! |
Aloha!
11/27/10 - Yeah, the Aku is often late to the party, but eventually, he gets there! Sweet Home Cafe has been open for a couple of years now, and while other Asian hotpots (a new section I just installed a couple of weeks ago!) like Shabu Shabu Bangkok, Hotpot Shabu Shabu, and Hotpot Heaven have only been open for a couple to six months or so, that can be an eternity to the many savvy and prolific internet foodies out there. Of course, I'm not talking about Japanese hotpots, which have long been represented here in the islands through spots like Shabu Shabu House, Ichiriki, now-closed Neo-Nabe, and various other Japanese restaurants. Japanese hotpot, called nabe by its most encompassing name, uses basically the same general ideas - boiling broth at your table, raw items cooked yourself, dipping sauces - but vary on broth types, ingredients, and sauces. We'll get into some of these differences in today's visit to Hotpot Heaven.
McCully Shopping Center, where the restaurant is housed, has a parking lot that fills quickly during prime-time, but remember that they also have an underground lot accessed from the one-way Pumehana Street-side. Actually, it's even tough there on a busy night!
The sign outside the restaurant is so small and virtually useless that we initially had a difficult time finding the place, but just know that it's on the first floor near the Ewa side, opposite from 7-Eleven and Fook Yuen:
We arrived at close to their lunch-time closing of 2pm, but they were gracious enough to allow the two of us and also another couple a seat. The staff were all kind and very helpful without being intrusive.
The place itself is simple but clean and modern, with smooth, glossy, granite-covered (or something similiar!) table-tops and wooden chairs not of your typical Wal-mart variety.
Once seated, you'll first order any of their ten varieties of broth in split pots that can accomodate two different types. In addition to flavors like miso, tofu, Thai-style, seafood, vegetable, chicken, and even a Hawaiian that utilizes fresh pineapple, there's also a beef and mushroom broth, both shown here:
Their beef broth is basically the same as a Vietnamese pho, while those mushrooms on the other side are not additions, but come as a flavoring included in the broth. It takes about ten minutes for them to prepare any of your boiling soups, which leaves you with a perfect window to exercise your primal hunter-gatherer skills. Only, instead of spears and arrows, you'll be collecting grub with your bare hands, from a comfy, refrigerated buffet you'll soon see.
During this ten minute foraging period, you'll also be gathering some of the sauces that mark one of the biggest advantages Chinese/Southeast Asian hotpots have over their Japanese counterparts, which normally use only a few soy or maybe miso-based dips. Don't get me wrong, Japanese sauces are great and all, but other Asian/Southeast Asian spots like these utilize a much wider variety of different flavors, with tasty and exotic names like ginger/onion, red bean, black bean, chili, garlic, sesame oil, patis, and more - it's hard to compete with these kinds of powerful punches!
The large refrigerated cases sit off to one side, where you can choose any number of ingredients to add to your broth. As you can see, they are stacked with all kinds of possibilities, like fish balls, fishcake, tofu, white crab, mochi, shrimp, scallop, beef balls, pork balls, and all manner of vegetables:
Rather conspicuous in their absence are raw meats of the red kind, but that's probably a good thing for sanitation reasons. I think a bigger reason, though, is because the presentation of beef is done similiar to a Korean yakiniku restaurant, which means rolls that are nice to look at, but in order to keep their shape, they must be part-frozen. The warmer they get to room temperature, the more they will deflate like a puka'd tire, as you can already begin to see!
The term shabu-shabu is attributed to hotpot restaurants of all ethnicities, but is a rough translation of the Japanese swish-swish, from the sound and motion made from holding a piece of beef in hot broth, all the while swishing back-and-forth to cook the piece evenly and unfold the possibly layered sections often found in these super-thin cuts. It may take a few tries to find just the right level of cooking needed. Though it'll take only a few seconds whether being rare, medium, or well-done, removing the piece too early will provide a slightly chewy texture, while leaving it too long will, of course, render it boring and over-done. Done just right, it'll be tender, juicy, and delicate. Find your sweet-spot, and stick to it!
One interesting item from the fridge, and one I had to pull, was a round of bittermelon generously stuffed with pork, shrimp, noodles, and such. Like their house-made dumplings and other ground meat types, they are all pre-cooked so you don't have to worry about food poisoning or anything like that. A simple re-heat in your boiling broth is all it takes. Here's the stuffed bittermelon as well as dumplings, both great!
Another advantage (some would call it a disadvantage in another way!) Chinese/Southeast Asian hotpots have over Japanese hotpots is that with the latter, you'll sometimes find broths consisting of little more than a single piece of konbu seaweed for flavor (not always, though, especially regarding newer spots!), or maybe a light katsuo-boshi - in which cases, needless to say, you'll rely more heavily upon your sauces or even the pure taste of the hard ingredients. Non-Japanese spots generally use broths that, like their sauces, arrive with much more punch, so much so that they are basically boiling cauldrons of soup that can be consumed as is, in and of themselves.
Still, even with a well-endowed broth, adding watercress, Chinese cabbage, garlic, beef, dumplings, and other hard ingredients will bring further complexity to the end-result, changing the nature of the broth according to your own choice of additions. Here's our entire spread, ready and waiting for a good dunking!
And here's a good portion of that spread, dunked!
After some hot water treatment, you can remove the hard ingredients into small bowls to make sure they don't overcook:
The last thing you wanna add to your broth is noodles. I'm not too sure what type of noodle we gathered, as I asked our kind server if they were rice noodles, as in a good pho, to which he replied "Yes, same thing." However, they were not quite the same thing. These were transluscent with slightly-darkened spots throughout, like a konnyaku noodle, and thick. They were also very firm and very, very chewy. Though not too shabby, I couldn't help but think a real pho noodle would have suited us much better.
But no worries, as Kumi and I really, really enjoyed our meal here at Hotpot Heaven. How can you not feel great after throwing down a bunch of veggies and a hot, heart-warming soup? Yeah, I know Sweet Home Cafe on South King gets all the attention, but it's not always the easiest thing dealing with the lines and throngs of chattering people everywhere! Here, it may get a bit crowded during weekend evenings, but not anywhere near what you'll find over on South King. Plus, Hotpot Heaven is also open for lunch, when you won't have any problems immediately finding a seat, and during this time, all broths are half-off! Good stuff!
With full, satisfied tummies, Kumi and I were happy not only from the food, but from the prices, which totalled about $17 each. Like a conveyor belt sushi house, plates are color-coded, and they tally everything up at the end of your meal:
If you haven't tried Asian-style hotpots, please do so. Although it may be a bit too much salt for some, it's a good and tasty way to get down a lot of veggies. Since you have total control of everything that goes in, however, carnivores can also be happy with as many plates of beef, pork, shrimp, fish, chicken, or whatsoever they desire - at slightly higher prices, though!
I'm just glad non-Japanese hotpots are available in the islands these days. I mean, they are all over Korea, China, Taiwan, and Asia in general, so it's about time, ey?
And by the way, have you seen the new Umami restaurant, at the facility across Crane Park, the place that's left a trail of victims including Wasabi Bistro, Wasabi & Nadaman, and Sake Street? They just had a soft opening this past week and specialize in kushiyaki and yakitori items, the latter of which won't actually be available until sometime next week. When that happens, we'll be back again, and soon after that, I'll be posting a full report, for sure! Thanks Hitomi, for the great and friendly service! See ya again soon!
Hope you've all had much to be thankful for this past week! We had some great friends and family over, and I prepared a feast of turkey, garlic-roasted mash, Portuguese sausage stuffing, real gravy, and a killer Pietro's shoyu dressing pasta salad w/imitation crab, pimento, green onion, and chopped shiso leaf. Took me all day, but it was fun, fun, fun! The first round (Thanksgiving) of this year's Holiday Triple Crown action (Christmas and New Year's being the other two!) has begun with a bang!
Take care, and Aloha till next time!
Aku
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