The Q Hot Pot is boiling up tasty business at Zona Rosa

If you know Q like we know Q — Kieu (pronounced Q) Cao, the owner of the one-month-old Q Hot Pot restaurant at 8610 N.W. Prairie View Road in Zona Rosa — you would understand why the Vietnamese native, raised and educated in Boston, might be a little homesick in the Midwest for the culinary traditions of her past.

“I like Kansas City,” says the 32-year-old Cao, “but I miss the opportunity to have the shared dining experience of shabu shabu, where friends gather around a hot pot for a meal with appetizers and a cold beer or a cocktail.”

Cao moved to KC last year to be close to her boyfriend, Kansas City resident Vinh Luong, whom she met  in Vietnam. She was surprised, moving here, that there wasn’t a restaurant that offered both sushi and shabu shabu, which she calls “Japanese fondue.” It’s not fondue in any traditional sense — that French word is derived from fondre, or “to melt.”  The beef, chicken, lamb, seafood or vegetable selections cooked in the pots — heated on an induction hot plate fitted into each of the dining room’s wooden tables — aren’t plunged into melted cheese or hot oil but flavorful and light broths.

“I wasn’t sure if my customers would even know what shabu shabu meant,” Cao says. “It’s not a familiar term, even in American-Asian cooking. Everyone understands what fondue is supposed to be.”

A Japanese cooking technique dating only as far back as the 20th century, shabu shabu is prepared in a pot of hot, boiling broth — Cao offers a choice of eight with two of the options, chicken broth or vegetable broth, offered free, while the other six broth choices range from $2.50 to $4.50.

The shabu shabu choices, which easily feed two or three patrons, range in price from an all-vegetable and tofu assortment at $16.96 to a plate of USDA prime rib of beef at $27.95. All of the courses include an assortment of fresh vegetables with fried and soft tofu, and a choice of steamed rice, thick ropelike udon noodles or thread-thin vermicelli noodles. Dessert is also included, although a tiny glass bowl of green beans drenched in tapioca pudding is a distinctly acquired taste.

Kieu Cao designed the tiny dining room, with its Tiffany-box blue walls, herself. She’s a little concerned about her decision to open the venue in Zona Rosa. “I thought there would be more foot traffic and I liked the fact that it was close to the airport,” Cao says. “But I’m wondering if I might be more successful if I had opened in Westport. This restaurant is less about traditional dinners than gathering for a drink, like a lychee martini, and a snack.”

Still, it’s easy to assemble a hearty meal from the menu’s 10 hot-pot entrees and the variety of “Asian tapas” that includes excellent plump Vietnamese spring rolls with poached shrimp, pork and fresh mint, and squat crunchy fried egg rolls filled with ground pork, taro root and carrots. This list also features banh mi sandwiches on a crusty French baguette, deep-fried chicken wings and sweet-potato fries.

Q Hot Pot is open from 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday, from 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and from 12:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Sunday.