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.