Taste » 20 Golden soup:
This autumn, foodies in Beijing are flocking to restaurants serving a new broth featuring fish maw and chicken that has taken the hotpot scene by storm.
As the weather gets progressively colder during autumn, the queues at hotpot restaurants all over China inevitably become longer as diners seek reprieve from the chills in a bubbling pot of broth.
While there are many different types of broth available, one of the most popular types these days is fish maw and chicken, also known as huajiao ji, a svelte golden broth that is chock-full of collagen.
Huajiao refers to fish maw, the dried swim bladders of large fish like croaker. The ingredient is considered as premium as sea cucumber, bird’s nest and abalone, and contains nutrients that can help nourish one’s lungs and kidneys.
The massive popularity of huajiao ji is evidenced by the countless diners posting photos of their meal on social networking sites such as Sina Weibo and Xiaohongshu. Many of these were posted from Having Luck Hotpot in Beijing’s Chaoyang district.
But the restaurant is by no means the inventor of this special broth. It is widely believed that Market Hotpot in Mongkok, Hong Kong, was the first restaurant to pioneer this broth which later became a hit among television celebrities and online personalities.
This trend then spread to the Chinese mainland recently, with a host of Cantonese-style seafood hotpot outlets launching their own versions of the huajiao ji soup base. This month, the famous Taiwan-style hotpot chain Coucou jumped on the bandwagon, introducing the broth to its 40 outlets across China.
Established in October 2017, Having Luck Hotpot currently has two branches in Beijing, with a third slated to open in December. The restaurant started out as specialist in Cantonese-style soup bases — it has 23 broths on its menu — before establishing its name as one of the first in Beijing to sell huajiao ji. Such is the popularity of this hotpot establishment that it sells 200 chickens every day. On weekends, it is common for diners to spend up to two hours queuing for a table.
In line with the owner Zhao Guanheng’s objective of making fresh seafood and premium ingredients affordable for the masses, Having Luck Hotpot’s huajiao ji broth, which includes a whole chicken and 100 grams of fish maw, is priced at a modest 288 yuan ($41.5).
Apart from the popular broth and the standard hotpot accompaniments, the restaurant also offers innovative dishes such as house-made balls containing foie gras and beef, as well as crispy cheese sausage options, both of which pair well with their soup bases.
Another ideal accompaniment to the huajiao ji broth is the humble rice. Most diners like adding cooked rice to the soup at the end of the meal to create what is called “golden soaked rice”, a mushy mixture that goes well with diced mushrooms and Cantonese-style cured sausages.
One of the ways Having Luck Hotpot stands out from the competition is its ambience. The hotpot establishment has decided to mimick the atmosphere of the iconic Hong Kong-style dai pai
dong, or streetside stalls, though all its seatings remain indoors. Situated alongside the seats are large tanks containing live seafood that diners can pick themselves.
“Today’s diners not only care about the food on a plate, but also a sense of place. You need to have a unique character to distinguish yourself from the pack,” explains Zhao.
The main selling point of Having Luck Hotpot is, of course, the taste and quality of its broth. Zhao is fastidious when it comes to the soup base. He only uses freerange, corn-fed Qingyuan chickens from Guangdong province. These chickens also need to be between 105 and 115 days-old, an age range he says results in the best-tasting soup base.
“I have tried broths using chickens aged under 105 days and over 115 days, and the taste is distinctively different compared to those that are just one or two days older or younger,” he says.
The chicken found in Having Luck Hotpot’s special broth is boiled till it is 80 percent cooked before being dunked into cold water, resulting in a chewy texture and a slippery, spongy skin. The broth, on the other hand, contains a combination of fish maw, chicken feet, beef bones, duck, pumpkin, and is cooked for no less than eight hours before it is served.