February 14, 2020
True gourmets tell the story of a spicy hot pot. Originating in Sichuan province, spicy hot pot is called ‘Mao Cai’ in its birthplace, which refers to a dish similar to hot pot but served in a smaller bowl, with food on bamboo skewers. When people from northeast China developed ‘Mao Cai’ by using bone broth and sesame paste instead of a red oil base, the spicy hot pot was born. Such innovations quickly promote the Sichuan local cuisine to nationwide street food.
If you want to try the authentic spicy hot pot, you must go to Mala Kung Fu, the one and only spicy hot pot specialist in Boston located on Brighton Avenue. Eric Lee, a Korean born in Northeastern China runs the restaurant.
When 16-year-old Eric Lee walked into the shabby restaurant in a small northern Chinese city nearly 20 years ago, he never thought hot spicy pot would be something he made into his career.
The ‘restaurant’ was more like a street stall. Sliding glass doors were wide open to the street, and four or five tattered wooden tables were set up close to each other. The owner, also the cook, brought out a bowl with soup: a hodgepodge of vegetables and meat, together with a steaming, rich, cream-color broth.
Lee tried the dish, and it was so good that he couldn’t help to come to this tiny restaurant again the next day before he left the city. “It was an unforgettable taste,” Lee said.
When Lee and his mentor got involved in the food industry in 2007, they invited the cook from that tiny shabby street restaurant in Harbin to join their team. That cook helped create the soup recipe, which Mala Kung Fu delivered to some chain hot pot restaurants later. That’s how Mala Kung Fu started - selling that unforgettable soup.
“Many people have mistaken spicy hot pot as something easy to cook. But actually, it takes complex steps to cook the soup of it.” Lee introduced that Mala Kung Fu uses more than 37 kinds of traditional Chinese herbs combined with bone broth to create the soup base.
In Mala Kung Fu, people come in and use plastic bowls to pick up food from the buffet bar, where they will find fresh vegetables, soy products, and seafood. Later, beef, lamb, and other staples can be added into the bowl. The chef puts the ingredients straight from the plastic bowl into the base of the secret soup, and after a few minutes, the spicy hot pot is ready to serve.
Fangwei Xu, a Chinese student who has spent the last 6 years in the US, just finished a bowl of spicy hot pot at Mala Kung Fu and said, “This reminds me of my hometown. I used to love spicy hot pot during junior high school. Now even 100 bucks' delicacy could not replace spicy hot pot in my heart.”
