THE Chinese name of the Dadido restaurant - "Jian Kang Zhu" (healthy stew) - sounds like a small kiosk selling the Japanese-style meat skewers that are quite popular snacks in the afternoon. However, Dadido is actually a "new-concept" hot pot restaurant, a fact which surprised me on my first visit.

Unlike the other noisy and crowded hot pot restaurants in town, the newly opened second Dadido outlet in the Gubei area has stylish designs in bright colours. You won't see the same greasy steam here as in other hot pot eateries.

A figure among the oil paintings on the walls was eye-catching because above the curvy body of a female there was the face of the owner, Peter Lau, a celebrated TV host in Taiwan. These funny paintings revealed Lau's sense of humour, a feature of his TV programme.

Dadido was born accidentally. After Lau's wife gave birth to their first baby she gained quite a lot of weight and when she tried to lose it, she failed.

During that process, Lau and his wife discovered the importance of a balanced diet and the way to cook healthy food. They gave up traditional cooking methods, such as frying food in oil at a high temperature. Instead, they found it was healthier to boil food in water or a light stock. Lau applied chicken's bones and kelp to make the base soup for the hot pots, saying they were not as greasy and rich as soup made from ox bones and also contained fewer calories.

The menu is diverse, with many ingredients to choose from. Under each entry there is information on the number of calories it contains and how long it should be boiled in the base soup. With an all-you-can-eat policy, Dadido makes sure the menu contains the things people most like in hot pot as well as some more unusual ingredients, such as scallop, oyster, crab, fish skin and abalone. But out of consideration of cost, some of the expensive dishes can only be ordered once by each diner, for instance the spanner crab and dried scallop.

Lau suggested that diners in Dadido should select some vegetables first to warm their stomachs and then eat seafood and meat. Even the raw materials are brought on picturesque plates, which makes the dinner a more enjoyable experience. Still more impressive were the home-made dips, exclusive to Dadido, such as the lemon or ginger and vinegar sauce for seafood and the yogurt sauce.

There are fun and surprise elements to dining in the restaurant. In the middle of my dinner, some waiters emerged carrying a stick, on top of which many skewers of meat, seafood and vegetable balls had been inserted. This revived my memories of street vendors selling caramel fruit during my childhood.

The mushroom and meat balls were the best among all the ingredients, resilient and full of the aroma of the mushroom.

The tofu pudding, as a dessert, was excellent, made of fresh tofu, honey and peanut bits.

Dadido easily stands out among all the Chinese hot pot restaurants, but the answer to the question as to whether it really helps to improve health and lose weight, remains unknown. That will be left to the loyal customers who frequently visit Dadido.

Dadido

807 Huangjin Chengdao, Gubei

Tel: 6295-1979

B1, 1618 Nanjing Xilu

Tel: 6288-2779

Average cost: 118 yuan (US$14) per person