What can you tell us about Shuang Shuang?
It comes from Fah Sundravorakul, who has previously opened restaurants in Thailand and who's bringing his take on Chinese hot pot cooking to Chinatown - with a bit of a high-tech twist. There's a lot of do-it-yourself cooking involved, all using ingredients from the snaking conveyor belt of food that takes over the restaurant - not unlike Yo Sushi.
Where is it?
Right on the edges of Chinatown on Shaftesbury Avenue - Piccadilly Circus is your nearest tube stop.
Where should we sit?
If you're dining solo or with a small group, you'll want to sit by the conveyor belt downstairs - larger groups can opt for booth seating in the upstairs part of the restaurant.
So what's this hot pot cooking?
Each seat in Shuang Shuang comes with a space for a hot pot and controls for adjusting the temperature. So, put simply, you put your ingredients into a boiling broth and cook them. That's the very basic gist anyway - so keep with us as it gets more complicated from here.
How complicated?
It's time to get out the bullet points:
- Choose which broth you want - lamb, chicken, fish, veg etc.
- Once this is in your pot, set the temperature so it's boiling away
- Then choose your dipping sauce - either choose the house or make your own. If it's your first visit then absolutely choose the house sauce - it's one less thing you'll have to work out how to do
- While the broth is boiling, start to familiarise yourselves with the food that's making your way past you. It helpfully has pics of cows, pigs, fishes and veg so you can see at a glance what it is (you'll need that for some of the balls). If you can't work it out - the menu has some pointers too
- As with Yo Sushi, the plates are colour coded so you know which ones are pricier
- Then - once the broth is boiling, start grabbing things that take your fancy from the conveyor belt
- Everything takes 3-5 minutes to be ready - so avoid putting a lot in at the same time. And keep an eye on the thing slices of beef, as those will be ready much faster than they say.
- Once it's ready - forage for your food in the broth with the sieve, dip in the sauce before eating and start again...
Of all the ingredients - is there anything that is a must-have?
The scoops of paste - prawn and pork - are possible the top items to grab here, and seemed pretty resistant to potential overcooking. We also enjoyed the house prawn balls while the pak choi and the mixed mushrooms worked well too. We had a slight preference to the Black Bird broth (Black Chicken / Jujubes / Chinese Wolfberries) over the lamb tonic (Lamb Bones / Pickled Mustard Greens / Chilli in Lamb Oil) as it had more of a kick.
And you must also have all of the snack starters - the spicy crunchy pigs' ears and the Scallop and Prawn Fritters were excellent. Finally, we'd recommend finishing up with some noodles mixed with the broth.
Is the hot pot cooking hard to master?
Yes and no. It's fair to say that it's QUITE intimidating at the beginning, but once you have the basics worked out - it starts to become a lot more straightforward. You'll also start to get a better idea of the timing and the need to multitask as you progress.
But if in doubt - just ask someone - there are plenty of staff on hand to help. Or, do as we did and watch someone else who seems to know what to do.
Overall thoughts?
Shuang Shuang certainly adds something new to the Chinatown dining scene. Its high tech approach to hot pot cooking is getting a lot of punters through the door - as we left on Saturday lunch, the restaurant was completely packed, so it's already a big hit. We think you may need more than one visit to get the best out of it - but you'll have fun working it all out.
Shuang Shuang is at 64 Shaftesbury Ave London W1D 6LU. Find out more about Shuang Shuang.
