TCM Eats: Happy Lamb Hot Pot

When we walked by the projected, rotating happy lamb on the sidewalk, we hoped that for the first time ever, we could look forward to a winter in Boston.

Happy Lamb Hot Pot is a Mongolian-style hot pot restaurant in Central Square; part of a restaurant group with locations across the globe. After opening in March 2016, Happy Lamb has been on our short list, and when December’s cold weather hit, we knew our time had come. It was definitely worth the wait!

We ate:

Enoki Mushrooms



Napa Cabbage



Tofu Combo Platter (soft tofu, tofu skin, sponge tofu)



House Meatball platter (beef, lamb, fish, shrimp)



Seaweed knots



Fresh thick noodles



White rice



Angela’s Thoughts

There’s something so cozy about hot pot on a cold, dark winter night. We went late on a Sunday night, and lots of other people had the same idea; Happy Lamb was packed, and there was a (short) wait. One nice thing about the restaurant is that it’s a pretty large space, so a wait will never be too long, even at peak hours. Happy Lamb, like most hot pot and shabu-shabu restaurants, charges you a small base price per person, then extra for each menu item you order. This makes for a meal that’s easily customizable for both price and appetite.

Happy Lamb has a short, focused broth menu (three total): their original milky bone broth, their spicy chili bone broth, and a pickled cabbage broth. This may seem like a weakness (other places have many flavors to choose from, generally), but Happy Lamb does their broth very well! They also serve a “half-and-half”: their regular and spicy bone broths separated by a divider. This seemed like the obvious choice to us, especially on our first visit.

Their original bone broth is mild, delicate, and very creamy. Despite its softness, it was loaded with flavor – jujubes, cardamom, and other spice pods floated freely in the broth. In contrast, the spicy bone broth does not pull punches; it’s covered with a bright orange layer of chili sauce, and has sliced chilis and numbing sichuan peppercorns floating around. It rounds out with a flavorful base of ground pepper that settles to the bottom, and gives a huge flavor kick as you finish your bowl. The spicy broth, due to all of the chilis and peppers, definitely imparted the most noticeable flavor in the cooked ingredients, while the effect of the regular bone broth was more mild. I’m a huge fan of spice, so I preferred the chili broth, but both are delicious and well-done. It was fun and interesting to see which ingredients paired best with each broth type.

In our opinion, vegetables are a really important part of hot pot… so we ordered a lot of them. We tried to select vegetables that would hold their texture in the hot broth, so we ordered napa cabbage, enoki mushrooms, and seaweed knots. One thing we learned after ordering (and looking around at other peoples’ tables) is that the portion of raw ingredients that they give you is quite large. We started cooking (and filling up on) our vegetables pretty soon after we received them, and it was a pretty overwhelming amount for two people, both in the quantity of food, and the oversight required to avoid overcooking them. Though the quality of all the vegetables we received was amazing, I’d recommend paring down on the number of vegetables you order, or selecting the vegetable sampler to get a smaller, wider variety (though they do let you take your extra uncooked ingredients home!!).



We also ordered the tofu sampler plate, which came with sponge tofu, soft tofu, and tofu skin. This, along with the vegetables, was the first thing to arrive at our table, so we started tucking in immediately. We set up a system keeping track of which ingredients we put into each broth to time cooking (yes, it got pretty involved). The tofu was good quality, and sliced into nice, serving size pieces. All of the tofu soaked up the flavor of the broth rapidly, except the soft tofu, which was denser. After a while, we got swamped with ingredients and our system started falling apart. Most of the way into our dinner, I fished out a piece of soft tofu from the chili broth – we’d forgotten about it. It had soaked in so much broth that it was starting to disintegrate, and the color had deepened. That was one of the most delicious bites of the night! While most ingredients in hot pot need to be managed so that they don’t overcook or turn to mush, the tofu really shines when you drop it into the broth and forget about it until later.

Happy Lamb’s house meatball platter came with four types of meatballs: fish balls, shrimp balls, beef, and lamb. The fish and shrimp are a light, spongy texture, making them quick to cook; they will float to the top of the soup when they are ready. The fish balls were springy and salty, and their porous nature helped them soak up the flavor of the broth. The shrimp balls had a similar texture to the fish balls, but had a deeper seafood flavor. Both were delicious, and paired well with the chili broth.

The red meat balls are denser, and require slightly more cooking time. The beef and lamb balls are also more unforgiving – there is a definite decrease in quality when you overcook them (which we did…). The lamb meatballs were very gamy, but not unpleasantly so. The flavor was interesting in contrast to the other ingredients we chose. The beef meatballs tasted like unseasoned hamburger, and not much else. The red meat generally paired better with the original bone broth.

If I were to return, I’d reorder the fish and shrimp balls, and likely avoid the beef and lamb meatballs, due to their dense texture and finicky cook time.

We ordered both fresh wheat noodles and rice as a base carb for our soup. We ate the rice along with most of our meal, and left the fresh noodles until the end. The rice served as a strong base for everything we ate, pairing effortlessly with every ingredient. We quickly filled up on dinner before even cooking the noodles. I was so ready to recommend rice over noodles in my review… until we tried them. Oh man, they were delicious! They had a fantastically chewy texture, and paired so well with both broths – the noodles in the original broth were delicate and creamy and the noodles soaked in the chili broth were punchy and aggressive, tangling up the sliced chili and numbing peppers in every bite. It was a fantastic end to the meal, and if I could go back, I’d cook and eat them earlier, on an emptier stomach!

Best thing I ate: between the forgotten soft tofu in chili broth and the noodles, it’s hard to pick a favorite. Both seem like such simple components, but were unexpectedly delicious. The shared aspect of both is this: they soak up and project the excellent flavors of Happy Lamb’s soup broths!

Happy Lamb was both a fun dinner outing and an exercise in multitasking and time-management. The fact that the success and deliciousness of your meal ultimately lies in your own (hopefully capable) hands can be a downside to some, but it makes for an interactive date, or a great group dinner. I would happily go back to Happy Lamb!

Matt’s Thoughts

When you walk into Happy Lamb, the place just smells right. We huddled in from the blustery cold and were welcomed by a carafe of strong, hot tea (we got to share the last half cup - a perfect way to pass the few minutes it took for a table to open up).



I’ve found hot pot/shabu shabu place to go two ways: either you get a wide selection of broths where you have to wonder “What’s the best one?” and hope you pick right, or you get no selection and think “I hope I like these.” Happy Lamb falls into the latter category, and when it comes to their broth, they succeed with flying colors.

Definitely go with the half and half. On one side, you get a delicate, rich white bone marrow broth, and on the other, a similar broth but with a generous layer of chili oil and tons of red chilies. Both are delicious. One of the nicer things is that as your broth inevitably boils down, a server will walk around with more broth to refill your liquid level, as opposed to water.

To the food! A word to the wise - if you get the tofu platter (and you should), you should add the tofu early and then forget it exists. The longer that stuff cooks and soaks up the broth, the better. Enoki mushrooms were a great choice as well, soaking up and carrying both broths beautifully, with the slight noodly-crunchy texture of the enoki adding a pleasant contrast to some of the softer hot pot offerings. Of all 4 of the meatballs, the lamb was my favorite, though it was definitely the fish that carried the flavor of the broth the most (we made sure to cook at least one of each meatball in each of the broths, for science). Seaweed knots were nice, but as usual I got tired of them about ⅓ of the way through the portion. Cabbage was fine, but honestly the pieces were a little thick and challenging to cook all the way through without losing all texture.

Now, two important things outside of the meat and veg: the starch. We got a small bowl of white rice on a whim, and then shortly after got another. The white rice was well-cooked (a welcome touch), but it did such a phenomenal job of catching the extra broth and fat, and giving you a perfect vehicle to carry each of the different flavors. As we neared the end of the meal, we looked woefully at the wide wheat noodles we’d purchased. Another classic case of Matt and Angela over-ordering while hungry. Resignedly, we added the noodles into each of the broths - might as well at least give them a taste.

While the noodles cooked, we got to enjoy some post-meal conversation about our favorite orders, the quality of the broth, our shared hatred of cold weather. Eventually, it was time. We steeled our wills, reached in, fished out the noodles, slurped them up cautiously…

And then spent the next 10 minutes burning our mouths trying to stuff those noodles into whatever tiny amount of stomach space we still had left.

Seriously, those noodles were all stars. In each broth, they absorbed the final broth flavor (seasoned with the meatballs, tofu, cabbage, and seaweed) so well it felt like the noodles had been made with the stuff. They had a phenomenally chewy, springy texture that hits every point you want from a wheat noodle.If you go, you owe it to yourself to get an order of them (make sure to save them till the end of the meal if you can!).

I had a fantastic time at Happy Lamb and would absolutely go back, ideally with more people. One of the best parts of hot pot is that the portions are generous because you’re generally just paying for the uncooked ingredients plus prep. The challenge is that the portions are often large, and unless you reallllly love the item, you’ll probably get tired of it after a bit. The solution is, of course, to bring friends! If we went again, I’d personally aim for the beef and lamb plate (I like thin-sliced meat a bit more than meatballs), as well as the mushroom platter. If you go, let us know what you ended up choosing!

Overall:

In terms of the quality and price of the ingredients, Happy Lamb really knocked it out of the park. All of the food was fresh, the servings were generous, and the service was friendly and attentive. The broths were both complex and extremely delicious, noticeably changing in flavor profile as the meal went on. Considering the size of the menu and the quality of the food, we both can’t wait to go back and try more.

We give Happy Lamb Hot Pot 4 springy fish balls out of 5.