This Taiwanese shop in the International District specializes in serving a more passive version of hot pot where, instead of providing diners with raw ingredients, the pot is filled to the brim with precooked items and reheated at the table. The house special is the real draw, and features ingredients such as pork intestines, pork blood cake, and fermented tofu.

Fans of spicy broths should go for the strong, mala soup base at this relative newcomer to the International District. The Chengdu Three Treasures dish comes with beef aorta, tripe, and omasum, meats that are not readily available at most hot pot shops in Seattle. Pro tip: the sweet potato noodles soak up the broth best.

This international chain — with outposts in the International District and Bellevue — takes a slightly different tack than similar places by not really encouraging DIY meat and vegetable sauce dipping. But the restaurant adds so many different herbs to its soup bases, creating a fragrant, rich, and aromatic broth, that it really doesn’t matter. Servings of lamb, a Mongolian hot pot staple, rounds out the experience.

This International District spot serves up Chongqing-style hot pot (a beef tallow-based soup, turned red from the addition of chilis and Sichuan peppers) with a choice of two different soup bases, original or spicy. Spice levels range from 1-10, but be warned — upping it may result in a broth that’s a bit too extreme for the uninitiated. Chunks of beef fat in animal shaped molds provide diners with a playful way to increase their broths’ richness and flavor content.

Morfire in Capitol Hill fills in a major gap in Seattle’s Thai food scene through its hot pot, orsuki, offerings. The broths are accompanied by sauces that give off sweet and sour flavors, with unmistakable heat shining through. Don’t forget to try the Suki Hang, or dry hot pot, which features stir-fried glass noodles mixed with a spicy sauce from Thai chili peppers, all served up on a sizzling cast iron pan. There’s a delicate sweetness from a hint of preserved bean curd.

The sauce bar is extensive and the range of items are expansive at this Bellevue outpost of the international chain, even offering standalone snacks like fruit and peanuts for customers to munch on. A couple of highlights are the perfectly tender marbled beef and the Kung Fu sliced potatoes, which are wafer thin and absorb immense amount of broths.

This shabu-shabu place in Bellevue provides diners with broths ranging anywhere from the tongue numbing (mala) Sichuan spicy, to the earthy flavors of the spicy curry. Tender wagyu beef is one of the more notable meat options, served with an accompanying soup base in a pot made entirely out of a piece of paper. Originally created in Japan, thiskami-nabe, helps to absorb some of the oils in the soup, keeping it light as more of the fatty wagyu is dipped in.

這個是dmond restaurant is an all-you-can-eat, Japanese shabu-shabu hot pot restaurant, a form that emphasizes lighter and more quickly cooked ingredients. While orders of meat need to be placed with a server, this dining experience is enhanced by the self-service buffet bar in the back which contains various vegetables, noodles, and sauces. Broths such as soy milk and sukiyaki — a bold, sweet, and salty soy-based Japanese base — offer Eastside hot pot fans something a little different.