Hot and Sour Soup

I went to a birthday party this past weekend and the hosts served different types of international food. This hot and sour soup was one of the appetizers. I have tried hot and sour soup before, but didn't really care for it. Probably because one of the ingredients in hot and sour soup is bamboo and I don't like bamboo. However, this hot and sour soup was actually quite good. It had bamboo in it, but I couldn't taste or smell a the bamboo as much as I had in previous hot and sour soups that I have had before. My guess is that they boiled or cooked the bamboo before adding it to the soup and in other soups I have had, maybe they just added it in and cooked it right into the soup. Either way, this was one of the better hot and sour soups I have tasted and I actually finished by portion of it.