Over the year-end holidays I booked a table at Papa Chubo for a get-together with a few fellow Koreans. In Japan, when you get a craving for something spicy, a Sichuan-style Chinese place is a far better bet than a Korean-style yakiniku joint. Korean food in Japan is, after all, tuned to Japanese tastes.
Ingredients for the hot pot
We asked for the spicy hot pot.
Beef for shabu-shabu
Decent quality, and the price isn’t bad either.
You cook it in a bright red broth like this.
It’s loaded with sansho pepper, so your tongue tingles.
Subuta
Once the spicy stuff arrives, you need something sweet to go with it. It’s a dish similar to Korean tangsuyuk (sweet and sour pork). The first time I had it, it was fantastic, but lately the quality seems to go up and down.
Tomato salad
Nobody can eat only spicy food, so we ordered tomatoes too. Honestly, ordering rice is what really tames the heat, but since I was with regular folks, I couldn’t bring myself to commit such an outrage..
Finishing the hot pot with noodles
In Japan too, you usually finish a hot pot by adding ramen or udon to the leftover broth. We ate until we were stuffed. To make it through the long winter, I might have to come back a few more times ^_^