Lydia Chang: belief

Transcript context

…I totally agree with you. I call it the hotpotization of the Chinese restaurant scene. Hot pot is great fun. It’s really convivial, lively, inexpensive. It can be a very inexpensive way to eat and to share food with your friends, but in terms of cooking technique, it’s definitely low-skilled. That, of course, makes it hugely appealing for restaurateurs. You know how difficult it is to get good chefs, wok chefs especially. It’s a nightmare because it’s so difficult to do. With hot pot, you just need a good soup base — you can even buy it in. Then you just need staff to slice up bits of food, and your customers cook it themselves. I think it’s partly that hot pot is very popular and partly for economic reasons, that it’s actually just a lot easier from the point of view of the restaurateur. Yes, it’s poor, particularly with Sichuan. Sichuan has such amazingly diverse and exciting food, and hot pot is a poor reflection of all that. May I add? I think hot pot restaurants are like the McDonald’s in China. [laughter] It’s considered as a fast-food restaurant, really. Yes. Well, a lot of them are, but you also have incredibly high-end ones with seafood and —…

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