At Little Lamb Hot Pot, making something new for dinner, without shopping or dishes

Avoid if you’re going to a restaurant to avoid making decisions about food

As a rule, I don’t spend my money in chain restaurants. But pleasing my children is more important than my aesthetic aims. They get whatever their heart desires.

Which is how I ended up at Little Lamb Hot Pot, the Mongolian-stylehotpot place on Sheridan Drive, stirring my chosen dinner ingredients into a bubbling vat of Sichuan broth, thinking: This is a hoot.

So I decided to get over myself and offer you a tour. With stores on four continents (Australia, North America, Europe, Asia) Little Lamb is what a Chinese friend calls “the McDonald’s of hot pot.” That’s not as much of a putdown as a comment on their ubiquity.

In an earlier era, this Little Lamb’s karaoke rooms were a favorite because we could dial up our favorites and sing our guts out in private rooms. That ended when the system switched and the songs I knew by heart were only available in Muzak-y chiptune versions. Which will not do when you’re itching to let loose on “Run to the Hills.”

The Amherst store offers snappy service, beer by the pitcher, and plenty of instructional aids for first-timers.

First, pick your broth: Herbal, tomato, mushroom, seafood, or “mala” spicy. You’ll put ingredients into the simmering liquid. When they’re done to your liking, you fish them out with your strainer, dunk them in your custom-mixed dipping sauces, and eat. On rice, in a separate bowl, or straight from the cauldron.

The spicy is no threat to anyone, I learned, coming in at barely medium on the Duff’s scale. Which was fine by me. Mala broths at nearby Chinese Chinese places are on another scale of ferocity. Drinking Little Lamb’s spicy broth is unlikely to produce seismic waves of regret.

Note that since most broths have animal products in the base stock, this isn’t vegan even if you only put tofu, noodles, and greens into your mix.

The base price includes a choice of meat brought out on a platter, plus about 50 ingredients you fetch yourself, from meatballs to vegetables to seafood to six sorts of tofu. Choose your adventure, and make your dinner fit your whim.

Pancakes, including scallion, are included.

To be fair, this does make hot pot a vexatious format for the sort of people who go to restaurants to avoid making cooking decisions. Abandon all hope of a passive dining experience if you enter the hot pot realm. Besides a mandatory stroll to eyeball ingredients before making your decisions, you need to make a trip to sauceland.

A lineup of more than 20 elements awaits your dip-making alchemy. Take a bowl or two, and follow the recipes posted over the shelf, or go by instinct, to assemble your post-cooking flavor boosters.

Elements include garlic, ginger, pickled, fried, and oil-borne chile applications, a variety of vinegars, roasted sesame oil, barbecue sauce, sesame paste, peanut sauce, and good old soy sauce. Plus fermented tofu, the blue cheese of Chinese cuisine.

Me, personally?

I pulled fat, chewy udon noodles, tail-on raw shrimp, enoki mushrooms, and three kinds of tofu – puffs, fish, and rolls. They went into the burbling pot, whose heat is adjustable by a dial under the table.

By the time I returned with my sauces – one off the recipe card, a second prominently featuring fermented tofu, black vinegar, and peanut sauce – I tonged in sliced beef ribeye and lamb. (Other meat choices we could’ve opted for include pork loin, chicken breast, and pork belly.)

It’s $27.99 per adult, to eat as much as you like. There are so many other interesting characters to introduce to your cauldron that even if you lay waste to the meat platter, there are battalions of reinforcements.

Here’s a quick look at the ingredient offerings.

Here’s the whole menu, for your reading pleasure.

There are even lowkey desserts: fresh orange wedges, cookies, and ice cream cups in vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry. Why not apply the do-it-yourself spirit to dessert as well? A fried sesame sweet bean doughnut on vanilla ice cream with a drizzle of peanut sauce isn’t too shabby.

This night was unlike other nights in another way: the application of my first senior discount, with my child as witness. Our server asked if anyone was over 55. “He is,” several people said, pointing.

It’s true, so I got 15 percent off, like all customers 55 years and older, Monday-Thursday, and children 3-12 are half price

Poking around while the steam rose, playing compare-and-contrast as we did our individual thing together, made hot pot about more than eating. Settling in and chatting while things cooked, getting to double back to try a new inspiration, fed my brain as well as my belly.

If you don’t like making decisions, stick to regular menus. Want to make something new for dinner without shopping or washing dishes? Little Lamb Hot Pot may hit the spot.