Ribbon Cut On New Haven’s Latest Hot (S)Pot

Hot Pot is the name and aim of Hu Ping-Dolph’s latest New Haven revelation: a sit-down soup joint at 68 Whitney Ave. offering a steamy reprieve from the cold season.

Local officials, Yalies, and hungry patrons lined up along Whitney Thursday afternoon to celebrate the Feb. 28 opening of Hu Ping-Dolph’s third addition, alongside Taste of China and Steamed, to New Haven’s food scene.

“This area needs this kind of food,” Ping-Dolph told the Independent. ​“The East Coast is always cold.”

Ping-Dolph is not only a survivor of Connecticut’s cold season, but a rock amid the economic ebb and flow of the restaurant world. 

Originally from Nanjing, China, Ping-Dolph later moved to the states with her husband, Jonathan Dolph, and opened her first restaurant, Taste of China, in Clinton in 2000. 

Since then, she’s focused on growing her customer base within New Haven, opening up another Taste of China on Chapel Street back in 2013 and Steamed, a dim-sum centered spot also located on Whitney, in 2018.

With Taste of China, Ping-Dolph said she sought to bring ​“more formal, authentic” Szechuan-style Chinese (like this dish, squirrel fish) to the city. Steamed, she said, is about making certain that New Haveners have a go-to place to satisfy any sudden dumpling desires (or constant cravings). 

Hot Pot is Ping-Dolph’s most recent attempt to ​“bring more of my culture” to the area, while drawing attention to Chinese cooking not only as a source of salty satisfaction but as a salve for the sick. 

“I wanted to do something different — something healthy,” she reflected. ​“Winter time is so long, and the hot pot makes people very warm.”

“People get sick, then people get the soup,” she reasoned.

While guests like Mayor Justin Elicker helped themselves to a spread of chengdu dumplings (boiled pork dumplings drenched in chili oil), scallion pancakes, fried cuttlefish, and spareribs in black bean sauce, Ping-Dolph suggested fish maw or matsutake mushroom as the best sick-day soup bases.

Those in need of recovery not from illness but from oppressive cold, on the other hand, can meet up with friends inside the restaurant to order plates of beef tongue, seaweed knots, duck blood tofu, won tons, lotus root, spam, and beyond to quickly cook and consume in bowling pots of broth.

Elicker noted that while he usually says ​“Welcome to New Haven” at ribbon cuttings for small businesses, Ping-Dolph has been ​“investing in the community for ten years now.” And ​“dare I say it” — he said — building up ​“our little Chinatown” along Whitney Avenue, across the street from Hong Kong Grocery and Chef Jiang restaurant.

Alexandra Daum, vice president of New Haven Affairs and University Properties for Yale, ntroduced herself as the landlord of 68 Whitney.

“We are thrilled to welcome another minority and woman-owned small business to Downtown New Haven,” she was quoted in a press release about the event.

In person, she told the crowd that her visit to the restaurant just the night before saw sold out seats and packed tables: ​“People are already recognizing that this is the hot place in town.”