Do-it-yourself meal maybe not the ticket for young kids

Kids also like to take part in the preparation, given half a chance. Many families choose fondue for a special occasion once the youngest child is past that delicate age where he thinks it might be amusing to reach into hot oil with his fingers. Children thrill to the glistening excess of cheese and chocolate, the process and transformation of cooking, and the frisson of possibility (however remote) that a hyperkinetic younger sibling may become permanently maimed in a fondue-parlor tragedy. (“Mom told you no. … ”)

My own kids love the above — all of the above, as well as Korean barbecue and every other participatory meal I’ve introduced them to. So, I figured a no-brainer good time would be dinner at the new Buford Highway restaurant called Mini Hot Pot. I knew little about the place beyond that it offered pots of steaming broth and plenty of raw meats and veggies to swirl about in the bubbling soup.

Doesn’t that sound like big family fun?

This small restaurant, an offshoot of a hip Chinese-Japanese Brooklyn spot, seemed an easy sell. Bright, with colorful lights and posters, it was clean, inviting and fragrant with meat, seafood and vegetables — the ultimate stone soup aroma.

“Daddy, I want that good-smelling soup,” said my 7-year-old, sounding like the perfect child, as we walked in.

People sat at the few tables and along the counter, dipping, dipping, dipping morsels of food into their own individual pots of bubbling chicken broth set in wells. Bar blenders whirred perpetually, making fruit smoothies.

We sat down and looked at the colorful paper place-mat menus. That’s when the trouble began.

“Eww! Pig liver!”

“Fried pigskin! Gross!”

“Daddy says you have to order the intestines.”

“No! Daddy, do I have to?”

The family was in the throes of menu anxiety. High-pitched, hunger-fueled, intestine-fearful anxiety. Delicious smells and abhorrent words. So they began pepper-spraying me with questions.

“What’s a cattle fish ball?”

“I think it’s supposed to be cuttlefish ball, ” I said knowingly.

“Can I have a smoothie?”

“Yes, ” I said generously.

“Will I like anything on this menu?”

“Of course, ” I said, lying.

There were plenty of non-fright show items on the menu, I explained. Chicken, beef …

“What’s tripe?”

“Never mind the tripe.”

The waitress came with our kiwi and coconut smoothies, which the kids began sucking furiously. She encouraged us to ignore the a la carte items and order hot pot entrees that came with vegetables and noodles, but no pig offal. Easy enough. Seafood hot pots for me and my wife, chicken for the kids.

We managed to navigate the sauce bar without too much fuss. We all walked over to the back counter set with bowls of sauce labeled in Chinese and cryptic English and ladled out the various brown and ruddy concoctions into small dishes.

The waitress returned with our steaming mini hot pots. Hooray! She placed the steel canisters of soup in the wells in front of each of us. One by one, she reached down toward our laps and put her hand in the compartments in the table where she manipulated the buttons to the electric heating elements. She did it effortlessly, by touch — like a blind person reading Braille. And then she was gone.

Our pots of soup began spitting furiously, the gates of hell by way of Campbell’s.

“Daddy, I don’t like it.”

“You haven’t tried it yet.”

Heaping platters of dippables arrived next, crowding every inch of space on the table. Chicken and seafood, but so much more. Whole Chinese cabbage leaves. Raw eggs. Ears of corn. Stiff, clear sweet potato noodles. Vienna sausages. Wrinkled fish cakes. Spinach. Raw purple taro.

“What’s the purple thing?”

“Do I like these noodles?”

“I can’t get it out! I can’t get it out!”

“Ow! I got burned!”

“My noodles are too hot!”

“DAD! TURN IT OFF!”

One daughter’s mini hot pot had turned truly evil and menacing, with scalding eruptions directed by a furled cabbage leaf and seemingly aiming for her. I leaned over to look at the controls to the electric heater under her pot, first hitting my head on the table, then on her chair. There was a row of buttons labeled with Chinese characters. I began pushing frantically. The indicator light soon went out.

These things had two speeds: off and China Syndrome.

When I next tried to demonstrate the fun of dipping to my littlest daughter, I splashed a dumpling in the hot pot and scalded her, causing her to jump from her chair and run to her mother’s lap, where she stayed for the remainder of the meal.

With a moment to attend to my own meal, I fished a pile of hot pot glop into my bowl of chile sauce, shoved it into my mouth and inhaled when I should have swallowed.

I gasped for air. Choked. Turned red.

“Dad, are you OK?”

“What happened?”

“Is it too spicy? I thought nothing was too spicy for you.”

At that point I wanted to turn my hot pot on full blast and stick my head into it. I’d just boil away with the fish balls and the squid tentacles. I’d have a moment of peace on the way to that great soup pot in the sky, and I bet it would’ve smelled good.

The meal limped to its conclusion. We passed on the to-go containers. I was desperate for a shower, a beer, a total memory wipe. On the way out, the waitress gave my little one the remains of a papaya smoothie.

The kids seemed happy enough. My oldest said she really liked her food.

“I’d go back, ” she added. “Wouldn’t you?”