Making the dining an authentic Chinese culture experience
“One great thing about Americans is that they are a very curious group of people,” said Mr. Zhang, the owner of Haidilao Hotpot Restaurant once said this to an US media. As Chinese food culture penetrates deep into North American Market, people here know about this traditional Chinese cuisine for decades. They have numbers of fancy Chinese restaurant that makes Hotpot, clearly they don’t need more same Hotpot, and they need something different. Here is why Haidilao came to this even-mature Market confidently.
In China, every Hai Di Lao employs a handful of “noodle masters,” who train an average of four to six months before starting to perform their dance in the middle of the dining room. They stretch foot-long wads of dough into at least 10 feet of slender, ribbonlike noodle by whipping the center out like a jump rope and rippling and swirling it through the air like the ribbons twirled by Olympic rhythmic gymnasts. Often, the dancer flings the dough over customers’ heads as they squeal and clap, before folding it with a flourish and dropping it in the broth.
A Hai Di Lao employee, near right, performs a ‘noodle dance’ at a table of diners at a Beijing branch of the restaurant.
A magician in traditional costume performs at the restaurant.
Such showmanship, along with service, has set Hai Di Lao apart in China’s burgeoning restaurant landscape and has distinguished it from competitors that also sell hot pot, the traditional communal cuisine that originated in Mongolia centuries ago. Spicy versions emerged from the southwestern city of Chongqing and expanded in neighboring Sichuan province and then across China. Hot pot is particularly popular with groups of young people and families. The act of pulling food from the caldron lends to the chain’s name, which in Mandarin means “fishing in the bottom of the sea.”
Here for the North American Market, Mr. Zhang also said he would offer individual pots for U.S. customers rather than the group caldrons used in China. The reason, he said, is that Western dining is more individual. “Whatever they want is what I’ll give them,” he said
HaiDiLao Hotpot 