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Q: Laiwais, Do you like hot pot?
I like it every now and then. Cannot tell the difference between good and bad. My favorite one was in Xi'an for about 40 rmb all you can eat, with beer on the buffet. want to see what you all think.
Second favorite food after Chongqing spicy chicken.
If the meat and vegetables are fresh, and the oil comes out of a package (as opposed to just appearing already in the pot) it's great.
My wife and I would go three times a week if we could.
Hotpot is, IMO , one of China's best inventions. Well, in the winter at least.
Huoguo with the right ingredients is great. Cheap huoguo with frozen or stale ingredients is awful. It largely depends on the quality of what goes into it.
It's one of my least favorite Chinese foods but it's still OK -- I guess that says a lot about how good Chinese food is.
Nothing beats good hotpot and cold beer. But like everyone said, you have to have fresh, quality ingredients.And going with a group of people is best because you can order more things and get a taste of them all.
Shite. Boiled vegetables and fatty meat in a thin gruel.
Not a proper meal.
It can be good. I just hate how it is executed. It is always the same trash in the same order. We actually have a hotpot restaurant in town where you, can pay extra to, get a decent chicken soup in the pot... and then you put the usual garbage into that otherwise nice soup. It's dumplings over again, no frigging variation over the theme, just the same damn thing every time.
I love it... goes amazingly well with beer.
It just feels like more of an activity than just eating so I really appreciate that in China because most dinners bore the hell out of me.
Order your own stuff and throw it in, customize it yourself. Have to know a bit of Chinese and ingredients to get it properly though.
I enjoy hotpot, my favorite one is the North Vietnam one, where they use just water instead of oily soup 
Also, you have it outside instead of inside a shop, so your clothes don't the smell of it. In China, I prefer a kan guo over a huo guo.
I'm in Chongqing...so, hotpot is a MUST! There are so many varieties to choose from, spicy or non spicy, it's your choice. I absolutely love the one with frogs and fish. And the food is always fresh because you pick them live from tanks and watch them clean in full view. Forget the dumplings and other trash like beef balls and fish balls. Just add vegetables, bean curd, lotus root and beef....lots of beef. Yum!
Beautifulsoup:
When I was in Chongqing the hot pot was the best I had.
Robk:
Sichuan and Chongching has the best hot pot... hands down!
And I agree, the fish balls and beef balls and all that jazz suck.
Just toss in the fresh veggies the sliced meat and noodles and it is awesome.
I hate hotpot, and wet noodles and chicken soup. This how I think the average Chinese cooks, bits of stuff boiled in their only pot.
TedDBayer:
In fact, I love 4.3% of Chinese food that I have tried. Oh, look, floating duck head hot pot,, yum. Why can't they make beef stew, o right , the head is too big to fit in a bowl, but not the eye balls.
I love hotpot, but it has to be cooled down. I do not like very hot food in general, so I often have to wait for it to cool down, or I can't enjoy it.
In fact, I love 95.7% of Chinese food that I've tried.
Hot pot is above most of the other slop. If we're not having Uyghir food then I guess hot pot's next on the list. I'm not keen when they bring the baby fish that they've scored along the sides but haven't killed them yet and throw those in. I think that's a little on the barbaric side. At least the pigeon seems dead when we have that.
As said above, green vegetables and lotus root and lichen and doof and real cold beer all goes down well.
I remember the best one I ever had was in Chinatown in Sydney a few years ago. Oh, and the one we had in Ulsan is Sth Korea. Except they call it something else. Shabushabu, or something like that. Anyhow, it was terrific. Better than China.
C'mon guys! Good hotpot, authentic hotpot, is fantastic. Shouldn't be too oily (but should be spicy). You should have a choice of stocks beforehand - spicy, medium or lame.
Some stocks come with meat (lamb, chicken) or fish. Others, de nada.
You order your meat and vegetables, and cook according to your own taste (a la Korean BBQ only boiled as opposed to BBQ'd).
Drink beer, eat, talk, drink beer, eat, talk. Hotpot is the ultimate social meal (next to an orgy).
Beautifulsoup:
yeah, some places you can get two soups, one for the lamers and girls on their period, and one for everyone else.
I wish i could say something interesting, but can only say yes, i like hotpot.
