Dolar Shop

At hot pot restaurants the food comes raw and which you then cook yourself by shoving it in a pot of broth heated on your table. There’s a bit of extra labour for dinner and any responsibility for food poisoning is your own. The flavours come from the different stock and wide variety of sauces for dipping. The Dollar Shop is one of the finer restaurants of this type in Shanghai marked out by its great location and the view, well worth it for around 100 RMB per head. Right opposite Jingan Temple on the floor of the Hotel most of the tables look out over one of Shanghai’s most glamorous districts. Hot pot dinners usually take about twice as long as a normal meal so there’s plenty of time to take it all in.

 
The Dolar Shop serves a vast selection of additional flavours at the sauce bar as well as individual mini hot pots. Normal practice is everyone sits round a large vat of broth and fishes out whatever’s been thrown in. At the Dolar Shop each diner can choose their own stock and control what goes in it. In short the Dolar Shop is hot pot done with a bit of style.

 
*A word of warning, all food comes raw so make sure you cook it thoroughly, especially the prawns which at most places will come live in a bowl with a plate on top to stop them escaping. They can jump surprisingly far when faced with a bowl of boiling broth.