Gokohai: Japanese Hot Pot

Thursday, 08 April 2010 07:57

Written by Amanda Alexander

Gokohai serves Japanese style hot-pot, better known as shabu shabu. Although hot pot season is coming to an end as the weather warms up, Gokohai’s focus on mixed vegetables, wheat-flour noodles and puréed radish and carrot toppings makes this restaurant a fresher alternative. If you call ahead, you can reserve a small Japanese style tatami room, or walk in for a table. Each seat has an individual pot, so you don’t have to fish around your friend for the thinly sliced meat or figure out how to cook something separately for a vegetarian.

For those who think of hot pot as being just giant piles of meat, the menu has well selected pre-set kamaboko (ground fish cake), konnyaku (a grey jelly which is a popular Japanese diet food), vegetables, mushrooms and pressed tofu platters. We also ordered a bowl of prawns (12 RMB), but to be honest we should have ordered one bowl per person. The meat slices were very lean and it wasn’t necessary to scrape any fatty water off the top of the pot during the meal.

The Asahi drafts are about as cheap as they come and an All-You-Can-Eat option is available for 88 RMB. The menu is in English, Japanese and Chinese, with some photos available in the meat section of the menu. I should mention that this restaurant is popular with the Japanese expat community, so there is typically a wait in the evenings and there is very little room to stand near the entrance. They are definitely trying to squeeze in as many people as they can, but it isn’t overly noisy thanks to the room dividers.

Gokohai 御香海

1720 Huaihai Zhong Lu,
near Wuxing Lu
淮海中路1720号
近吴兴路

64717657

Closest metro: Hengshan Lu