Little Sheep Mongolian Hot Pot

A group of rowdy misfits hit one of Houston’s newish establishments for a cultural adventure for our bi-weekly Wednesday night supper club. This rowdy group (minus five of the usual suspects) included two that had already imbibed copious amounts of champagne, a nursing mother who can’t have to soy or dairy, a newly turned vegetarian, and a shellfish allergy. This is quite a combination when you throw in the complete foreign concept of Mongolian Hot Pot and wait staff that speaks little to no English.

First a bit of background on the Little Sheep Mongolian Hot Pot. This is a chain restaurant throughout China that serves the traditional hot pot. Essentially hot pot is boiling broth with raw meats and vegetables to be cooked at the table. Houston is the first city outside of California to have a franchise open up in the U.S. and we are quite proud to have it!! It speaks to the wonderful diversity we have in this city.

Ok, back to the meal. As you can imagine, ordering was a quite a process with this crew. We deciphered that you first order a broth then the items to be cooked in said broth. With vegetarian, soy, and shell fish issues in mind, we ordered two of the half and half (original one one side and spicy on the other) with one of the originals with a water based and one pot designated a shell fish free zone. We were on our way. That is until we begain ordering the dunklings. By dunklings, I mean anything from cabbage to lamb meatballs, scallops to udon noodles that you drown in the boiling broth to cook. Another 20 minute process later and we were set (although the general consensus was that we waaaaaay over ordered…par for the course.)

On to the food, the first thing I was able to try were the pork dumplings. We had two varieties at the table and both were quite good, especially when dunked in broth. Our instructions were a bit lean on the cooking times for the dunklings, so after a few raw in the middle lamb meat balls, I got the knack and they were very good as well. I had trouble waiting the entire cooling time after they were removed from the broth so my mouth was pretty scorched by the end of our meal. My favorites of the items we ordered included the scallops, beer beef, and sliced lamb, and the side of egg noodles accompanied nicely.

I stuck with cooking in the spicy broth and while it had some flavor, I couldn’t help but leave my dunklings in a bit longer in hopes they would absorb more of the spices. The broths were sparsely spiced with aromatics that I knew to avoid eating, but I think the spicy broth could have packed more of a punch.

We splattered, dipped, and slurped our way to the end of a good meal. Messy and fun, the Little Sheep Mongolian Hot Pot is a great for groups. I’ll definitely go again, but this time I’m ordering extra spicy and not wearing a hand wash only shirt!