Are you familiar with Asian Hot Pots?  No?  Then you need to immediately, and I mean right now, drag yourself over to Han Restaurant in Hartford, CT.  Han offers a wonderful dining experience.   Oh, did I mention that the food is fantastic?
As you may have noticed, The Goddess and her entourage love pretty much any Asian-type cuisine.  Normally, I would say “food”, but Han Restaurant offers you truly refined and wonderfully flavored cuisine.  It is truly a culinary experience extraordinaire!

So, about those Hot Pots.  Think flavored broths.  Some simpler.  Some highly seasoned.  Some sour.  Some spicy hot.  Sorry about the shadow on the broth.  Han Restaurant has a great range of flavors to choose from.  We chose a two flavor combination, the Seasoned Herb Broth (on the right) and the Chengdu Spicy Broth.  By the way, they aren’t kidding—this is spicy.  The broths were totally different, but equally delicious.  The premise of a hot-pot is simple.  You have this delicious hot broth simmering away right on your tabletop.  You place the pieces of meat/vegetables in the broth, cook them and then drop them into your choice of sauce and then pop it into your mouth!  Yum!  The meats are so thinly sliced they will cook done in about 15-20 seconds…seriously.   Isn’t that fun? But the real fun is in choosing the dipping sauces.  They have a “sauce bar”.  Now, this is my kind of bar.  As you know, The Goddess has never met a sauce she didn’t love, love, love, and these were no exception.  The sauces will taste slightly salty, because the meat and vegetables are unsalted, so in essence, the sauces are the salt for the meal.  Isn’t that clever?  The idea is that you can mix and match the various flavors, but they have to pre-mixed sauces and they are really delicious.

We had thinly sliced beef, spicy beef, pork, lamb, pork meatballs with cilantro, shrimp and an assortment of vegetables.  It’s a pretty interesting assortment, too.  Han has something for everyone.  They offer a huge assortment of options for meats, fishes, noodles, and veggies.  This is a great place for a vegetarian, as they have many, many options, all of them good!  Oh yeah, that egg.  That will go in the clear broth at the end for Han’s version of egg drop soup…clever, huh?

Han has a private room in the back for groups.  Wouldn’t this be a great place for a rehearsal dinner, a birthday or going-away party?  Yes, it would.  We were celebrating the birthday of someone who is near-and-dear to The Goddess’s heart.  She loved it and Phillip, the manager, pampered us, was truly charming and wonderfully helpful.  I know the dear one felt celebrated.  It was a lovely evening.

We had leftover broth, which we brought home, so the next evening we had our own hot-pot, using the Chengdu Spicy Broth.  I’ll post what we did with that later on.  Life is good and you have to try Han Restaurant…you really must!

• Han Restaurant
• 310 Prospect Avenue
• Hartford, CT   06106
• (860) 216-5726

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