Ha, I accidentally submitted the post before finishing 
liked it a lot, and the vegetables were my favorite part. Cauliflower carries the heat, and the cabbage was as intense as in the wok charred cabbage I’ve had as a side dish elsewhere.
Yeah, I can’t help but think that I’m missing something fundamental here. I’ve read a few internet articles and they seem to emphasize that dry pot is like hot pot, only without the liquid so that the flavors are more potent. How that differs from standard wok dishes I’m not sure. The reliance on dry spices is certainly different than Cantonese stir fries, but the overall flavor and ingredients don’t strike me as atypical for Hunan or Sichuan dishes, though the texture is dry rather than saucy or oily.
The owner said that some ingredients benefit from drying out, but it is mostly a presentation style. I didn’t notice any extra charring like you’d get with a cast iron plate. Then again, I was eating it solo and keeping extra for lunch, so it’s possible I missed out on some type of transformation in flavor or scaling of intensity as a group would get to the bottom of the dish.
