EATING OUT

Tom is won over by the warming goodness of a communal Sichuan dining tradition

It’s a family ritual as smooth and polished as a river pebble, one of those rare places where culinary differences are put aside and harmony rules OK. Because we all agree that Shu Xiang Ge Hot Pot – perched at the top of West London’s Goldhawk Road – will never let you down.

So we troop, as always, into that bright, clean room, and sit down at a table by the window. I take the small pencil and tick those boxes on the paper menu, choosing our cooking broth, what will go into it, and things to have on the side. We know exactly what we want and while seasons may change, the song remains eternally the same.

A few minutes of delectable anticipation, before the great silver hotpot is fitted into its special indentation, and the induction heater turned on.

A thin metal sheet divides the liquids. On one side, chicken broth, pale, fragrant and light, with plump red dates and tiny goji berries.

This is soothing, gently savoury, medicinal stuff, in contrast to its neighbour, a seething, blood-red beef fat Sichuan inferno, livid with dried chillies and enough Sichuan pepper to numb the tongues of the entire Terracotta Army. It’s

As the great silver hotpot bubbles, the real fun begins

yin and yang, pleasure and pain, happy heaven and delectable hell.

As blip blip turns to hubble bubble, the real fun begins. Oyster mushrooms, bean curd skin and squidgy prawn balls go in first, ready when they float to the top. Fat beef is wrapped around pickled chillies and needs only a second or two, just like the tissue-paper-thin slices of Iberico pork and rib-eye beef, the latter served on a mound of ice. Swish swish, then into lettuce leaves, with more chillies, a jolt of vinegar and garlic mashed in sesame oil.

There’s offal too (beef tendon, duck stomach, three kinds of tripe and two sizes of brain is just the start), but I’ve yet to convince the children of the textural joys found on the menu’s wilder shores. Hey ho.

By now, my lips tingle, my tongue throbs and my brow is beaded with sweat. The children revel in my pain. But the best is still to come, a bowl or two of those broths, lustily slurped, now containing echoes of everything cooked within. This is messy, joyous, life-affirming eating. And proof of the eternal appeal of the communal pot.

About £30 per head. Shu Xiang Ge Hot Pot, 10-12 Goldhawk Road, London W12; shuxiangge.uk