Flavor to savor

Eating lamb during Beijing's bitter winter is a 200-year-old tradition and a guaranteed way of beating the freeze. Hong Dacai, the owner of Muslim restaurant Hongyunxuan, claims Mongolian and Manchu aristocrats used to favor lamb hotpot during the cold season.

"If you look at the shape of a typical Beijing-style bronze pot, with the lid on, it looks exactly like a Mongolian yurt," he says. "When you open the lid, the pot looks similar to the hat Mongolian singers wear."

Marco Polo recorded eating Mongolian hotpot at Genghis Khan's palace and Hong speculates that it was not the rinsed or instant boiled style of lamb hotpot, but boiled lamb chops.

"That was 800 years ago. But if you visit Inner Mongolia, you won't find any of the bronze Beijing hotpots. Why? Because lamb hotpot was only for nobles."

The same was true for Manchu people, who brought lamb hotpot from Northeast China to Beijing. It was only 240 years ago, when Emperor Qianlong held a banquet for 1,000 retainers, that lamb hotpot became popular.