There are basically two kinds of hotpot restaurants in Beijing: mongolian style and Sichuan style. The staple of both types of hotpot is mutton (yang rou). The meat is usually sliced frozen so that it curls up into a tube shape. Then you place the meat into the hotpot, which is a copper pot containing a boiling soup base. After a few seconds the meat is cooked and you dip it into a sesame butter sauce. The verb describing the action of cooking the meat this way is called "shuan."other shuan-ables include beef , frozen tofu, Chinese cabbage , bean sprouts , and glass noodles. Spicy Sichuan hotpot has a soup base which can be described as either superspicy or mildly radioactive, but the pot is often divided into half spicy, half nonspicy soup pots. The soup base for Mongolian style is not spicy, and usually consists of some vegetables and seafood.

    Famous Mongolian style hotpot restaurants are Neng Ren Ju at Baitasi, and Dong Lai Shun to the east of Tian"anmen Square. The most well-known Sichuan style hotpot restaurant is Jin Shan Cheng. Of which there are many scattered throughout the city.