Good Fortune Hot Pots

A Chinese hot pot restaurant opened recently on 2700 South and 300 East. It's diagonally across the street from a classic Prairie School Architecture church.

I'm not entirely sure of the name. The menu said Good Fortune, the receipt said Good Future. The signage is all Chinese characters which I don't read. In any case, it was a pretty good meal.

The hot pot is set up like a buffet at $14.99/person. Add $1.00/person for every extra broth style you choose. They offer some different broths such as Chicken, Bone, Tonic, Hot & Spicy. We opted for the Chicken and the Bone stocks. The bone is the whiter of the two  broths. It turns white from emulsified fat, something considered a failure for western style stocks. It's the same concept as the Tonkatsu broth for Ramen in Japan.

The hot pot operates on a gas burner brought to your table. It's not particularly high output so you have to watch how heavily you load the pot to keep it cooking. Also, it's best to keep the ladles out of the broth between uses or the handles become quite hot. 

And the buffet tables of which there are three.

This first photo shows the seafood table. It has shrimp 2 ways, mussels, fake crab, real crab, a fish, squid or cuttlefish and so on.

Next is the vegetable table. This one included potato, daikon, bean curd skin, broccoli, cauliflower, Napa cabbage, Romaine lettuce,  and a few different mushroom choices. I was a little surprised by the large pieces of tree or cloud ear. It was a nice touch. The bean curd skin, potato and daikon had been blanched to accelerate the final cooking time at the table.

The meat table offered ham, pork, beef, chicken, fish balls, pork balls, shrimp balls and a fish cake. 

Saucing was a little confusing. Our staff couldn't readily offer an English description of all the 5 sauces. The primary sauce in the largest bowl was identified as a sesame sauce. I think it was built from toasted sesame paste, soy sauce and ginger. Probably some other things in lesser quantities.

The Thai Sweet Chili sauce was obvious, and a good choice. There was a hot mustard. A dark ketchupy looking sauce that had an intense hot finish. And a thicker light tan sauce with a vaguely meaty flavor and salty taste. 

We quite enjoyed ourselves and you should give Good Fortune/Future a try yourself. I'll be including some daikon potato and bean curd skin in my hot pots in the future. Those were a good idea.