Blue Ocean Asian Cuisine (Little Chengdu)

This Denver Tech Center strip-mall spot, which still bears the "Blue Ocean" sign and online presence of its predecessor, offers an array of traditional Chinese dishes in addition to its familiar Chinese-American fare, from noodles hand-pulled to order at an exhibition counter, to dapanji, or big tray chicken, to hand-formed Sichuan wontons stewed in chili oil. But the showpiece at Little Chengdu is the stove atop your table, where you can cook up your own hot pot. Choose a broth, designate a spice level (be aggressive with your preference if you really like heat), and then order your produce and protein. We recommend starting with tofu skin, lamb slices, lotus root and enoki mushrooms, then finishing with noodles and greens, but Little Chengdu serves all of its hot pot all-you-can-eat style, so don't be shy. While you wait for your pot to boil, wander back to the condiment bar and mix up the sauce in which you'll dip the cooked morsels that you fish from the pot. Sesame oil is a fairly traditional base, but you can go wild from there. Hot damn!