My mom and I were invited to the famous hot pot restauraunt in Taipei, which seemed to be very popular and filled with young and attractive ladies. The hotpot is SiChuan style, features the numbing and burning chilly oil covered beef soup, you are allowed to cook anything in it to your satisfaction and it it without any dressing.
However, I was most disappointed. The soup is not genuine, it has way too much MSG and much too salty. The chilly oil on top is not the flavor I tasted in the old fashion SiChuan restaurant in the small alley near my home 20 years ago.
The fabulous restaurant I remembered 20 years agao has the soup cooked out of beef bone and the chilly oil made of SiChuan pepper corns, cinemons, star anis, and other spices. The hot chilly oil was then pour into a bowl full of dried chilly flakes, which brought out the aroma also the hotness without burning the chillies. The combination of the rich beef bone soup base and aromatic chilly oil was hard to describe, at least I haven't smelled it for a very very long time. You can shabu-shabu the thin-sliced beef (or tripes) a second or two before devouring the juicy yet flavored meat. It is really sad that it is so hard to find such a restaurant in Taipei now. The soup I had last night was to salty and so much like instant noodle soup, I rested my chopsticks after a couple of tries.
Our taste buds are deteriating? Or people just go there to see cute girls?
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