Decent Japanese and Korean Cuisine Fusion (Hon Sushi Kingsway )

Hidden on the second floor of a Earls Restuarant, Hon Sushi is one of my favourite go-to places for food when I am around.  I love coming to this place because it is always not too busy and the place is pretty spacious. Overall, the cost of food here is slightly higher than average (the reason being that the portions are not too big).

Sushi - Their sushi is a bit on the expensive end in my opinion. For example, they sell their spicy tuna rolls for $4.95 a roll and their dynamite roll for $5.95 a roll. In comparison, the portions of these rolls are fairly small. You can get the same sized rolls for around a dollar cheaper at other places. That said, the quality is pretty decent and tastes good. Also, they spend time on the presentation of the sushi, so you will always find condiments or little vegetables accompanying the sushi.


Korean Hotpot - I am not Korean so I don't really know a good benchmark for Korean food. However, when I was here, I shared a hotpot with my +1. They said there are two sizes for the hotpots, one for 2 people and the other for 2-3 people. We ordered the large size. They brought the hotpot in a gas stove and then a selection of condiments on the side. I absolutely loved the condiments such as the edamame, sweet potatoes and kimchi. The hotpot itself was alright. What I noticed was that it was full of processed food. There were alot of Spam and sausages as well as packaged ramen noodles. That said, the price was not too expensive (so what can you expect right?


Korean Fried Chicken - This was probably my favourite dish. I know... eating stuff like this isn't too healthy but letting loose a bit sometimes won't hurt. Their fried chicken is always freshly fried and the juices of the chicken are all locked inside the crispy layers of the chicken. I definitely recommend this.

Overall, this is a pretty decent place to come to. More because of the venue (as it's not too busy and it is very accessible). The price is a bit on the higher end, but the trade off is you get a nice venue. 

The server that smiles only when you pay her/ pretty decent All You Can Eat Hot Pot (MaThai Hotpot Restaurant)

It was a cold night so a group of friends and I decided to look for hot pot. After driving through the Richmond area, we saw the sign outside of MaThai Hotpot for All You Can Eat hotpot for $21.95. To be honest, I was not too sure about how the concept of All You Can Eat for hot pots work.  If you think about it, soup fills you up and it's also cheap. By that rationale... you would get full really fast via hotpot, but I learned that there's more to it than that.
    The restaurant itself wasn't big, in total it could probably hold roughly 40 people. When we got in, there were only 2 people working that night and they seemed tired. We quickly got seated and the menu was brought to us. It was confusing at first because there were separate pricing for things (despite it being All You Can Eat). After asking one of the servers, we found out that we had to buy the soup base separately, and the All You Can Eat portion only referred to the things that go in the hot pot (like meat, fish and etc...). Apparently you can get more than one type of soup base (but they cost separately).
   We all decided to get the pork soup base. When the soup base came, there were huge pieces of pork in there. Compared to some other hot pot places I've been to, which adds the soup base using powder, they actually have the real meat in their soup bases. We started to order the things to put into the hot pot (I want to call them condiments, but that just sounds like ketchup... so let's just call them "things we put in hot pot for now).
   We decided to put an order for about 3 of everything to see what we are dealing with. In terms of the selection, there were many to choose from. From meat (lamb, beef, pork, chicken) to fish (shrimp, squid, and assortment of fish balls) to dim sum (such as dumplings, XiaoLong Baos) to things such as deep fried buns, potato cakes, nuggets to fish skin to quail eggs. In terms of vegetables, there was a fairly good selection as well. They also had skewers as well.
   After we put in our order, the first wave of food started coming. The portions were a bit smaller than we expected. 3 orders of meat really amounts to only a few pieces of meat in reality. The vegetables came in buckets, but the other items were similar in the sense that each portion/ order was small. After all of the raw foods came, the fried foods and grilled ones started coming too. The part I loved the best was the fact that the fried and grilled food was freshly cooked (hence why it took longer to come). You can also taste the freshness as it just emerged from the fryer. The food itself tasted pretty good, but it wasn't too special.
   That said, the portions were not too big, so we decided to go for seconds. Then we went for thirds... I think the server looked a bit annoyed with us (but understandably they were under staffed). When it was time for the third round, we decided to get more of everything just so we have enough food to fill us and we don't need to make another round. We ordered about 20 pieces of nuggets (of which only 4 came). By the time the 3rd order came, the server notified us that it's our last call (there was a time limit of 2 hours we can be at the restaurant.
   At that time, my friends and I were getting full.. so we decided to get our bill. It was funny when the server came with our bill, she wrote on there explicitly "+tips". When I got up to go pay her, I saw her smile for the first time in the entire time that we were there. The minimum amount of tips we had to give was 12%.
    Overall, I would say the service was a bit lacking, but it's understandable as they are busy and the food was relatively good. The price, after tips came to about $30 per person, which sounds about right for All You Can Eat Hot Pot. That said, for a meal, that tends to be a bit on the expensive side, so I'm open to come again, but not too often.

Little Sheep Mongolian Hot Pot 小肥羊火鍋連鎖店 (METROTOWN/Burnaby)

  It's one of the coldest days of the year, and my friends and I never tried this hotpot place that we always see ontop of CIBC so we decided to give it a try.
   When we entered it seem relatively empty, we were greeted by the waiter and taken to our seats. There, he gave use three menus, their regular, All You Can Eat (AYCE) and specials. The regulars seem to be fairly priced at about 6 to 10 for entrees (for lunch" but the portions sound small so we decided to go for the
AYCE option. 
    I must say, at $19.95 for adults and $14.95 per person and the strict rules such as no unfinished foods over 250grams and a limited eating time of 1.5hr, it was strange but we decided to give it a try anyway.
    For starters, there wasn't many varieties of things to add to your hotpot that you can choose from. There were a few mushroom, meat, fungus (I'm not sure why they call it that but I'm sure someone just directly Google translated it), and a few fish and vegetable options too. In general though, there weren't as many options as I thought there would be.
    Furthermore, you would imagine that for $19.95, the broth would be included, but it costs an extra $10. We decided to order the spicy broth. There was alot of chinese herbs inside of the broth/soup and at one point it looked like there was a lady bug (but I know it's an herb) in there.
   When the things we ordered came, the portions were pretty big, such as the pork (which was like 30 pieces for one plate when they said that each plate only comes with 10). The vegetables also came in a basket. There were somethings that looked funny and tasted funny too that came.
   One of the funny tasting things was the seafood sui mai. The wrapping looked sort of like play dough and it tasted like mochi... Also, I found that the chicken was slightly funny tasting too. It didn't taste bad, but was slightly funny. 
    That said, there were some things that came that were good tasting too, like the pork was pretty good tasting. 
    The broth, when it came was pretty good too. Though, I'd imagine the sodium levels are abit high in these dishes. Personally, I found it very spicy and once I took the first sip, I started sweating immediately. In summary, I would not recommend coming here if you are vegetarian because they don't have vegetarian broth, otherwise, besides the price, the place is acceptable.

Firepots (Brentwood station)

When I first walked into Firepots, the first thing that came to my mind was how empty the place was. The restaurant itself was not too big, and they had 5 or 6 servers there, yet, there were no customers. However, after that initial impression, we were greeted by a waiter that sat us down promptly. The waiter was really professionally dressed, and over all was very polite.
After being seated down, they gave us the menu. Their menu contained quite abit of items. They had a huge list of appetizers, and of course, hot pots. We first ordered an appetizer of vietnamese spring rolls (I think that's what they are called...). I'll have to admit, the price is pricy. For 2 rolls, I think it came in at about 6 bucks. Each roll is the size of 2 bites. It was delicious, but the price could have been lower.
After the appetizer, we ordered a curry chicken and a veggie hot pot. The curry chicken hot pot came first, followed by the veggie. The plates themselves were huge. I was abit stunned because the hot pot only came with the meat and vegetables, and unlike Asia, they weren't accompanied by rice. The two hot pot we ordered were generous in size. The veggie contained broccoli, lettuce and mushrooms, while the chicken had everything the veggie had, but also chicken. The soup base of the chicken was curry though, which was different from the veggie one. The quality was abit higher than average. Coming in at about $16 per hot pot, however, it was a bit pricy.
The environment of the restaurant itself was quiet, and abit dark, so it had a great atmosphere.
Overall, this restuarant has a good environment and quality of food, however, the drawback is that it is pricy.

Portland Sushi Hotpot (Portland Cascade Station) Review

There are not many places to eat at cascade station we find.We thought that since we came all this way we might as well find something we don't have back home. There were places like Red Robin's, IKEA, IHOP and etc... But they are everywhere and from the outside they don't look so special. As we walked around, we saw something that we don't have at home. It is a Japanese place that sells sushi and hot pots, and coincidentally  it its called "Sushi Hotpot".

  
 Even though the name doesn't sound too creative or appealing, the actual store is pretty legit. They have a revolving sushi conveyor belt that. Brings all different types of things from sashimi to calamari to sweets around.  This restaurant have a happy hour thing from 6 to closing from Sunday night to Thursday night.

In the two nights we were in Portland, we ate at this restaurant. The first night,which was a Saturday, all we ordered were donburis. Their donburis are only $4 each, and with no tax, and a fair portion and good quality, it is a steal! We ordered the pork katsu don, chicken teriyaki don and the unagi don. The pork katsu don was quite plain because it only had a piece of pork cutlet on it along with rice. In a sense it ws abit dry as it was lacking other things such as vegetables. Essentially, it is just a bowl of rice with a piece of fried pork on it. Even though the katsu don was a bit dry, the pork cutlet itself was good as it tasted not too overly fried or greasy. Next we have the chicken teriyaki don. This rice bowl tasted less dry than the pork katsu don because of the teriyaki sauce. The chicken teriyaki itself was fun if flavour, you can tell by its appearance that it was flame grilled, and it was full of flavour. Finally we have the unagi don. Eventhdough the unagi (eel) on the unagi don was abit thin, for the price that it comes at along with all of the vegetables that were included it is a good bargain.

     In addition, we also got a cup of calamari off the sushi belt and it was pretty decent. It was on a blue plate so the price was only 2 dollars. The quality was pretty good. The portion wasn't too big, it was fair.

    The downside to this restaurant, I must say is the fact that it is always busy and they way they organize their servers are like a gong show. There are only a few servers and all these seats, and they must clean up, be at the cash register, take orders at the same time. At some points during our visit, we would get random orders that the waiter forgot who ordered. Also, tryibg to call a waiter over to get something, it is alittle difficult because they are all over the place.

      The second day we decided to eat here again and try their rotating sushi bar. This time it was their happy hour, so we had to wait because it was slightly busy. During happy hour, everything on the conveyor belt was only a dollar provided that you buy a drink. The funny thing was we thought that the tea was free so we ordered tea, of which we realized later that it actually costs around $1.75 and we also ordered iced tea thinking that the iced tea is the drink we have for the happy hour. Compared to yesterday's selection of food on the conveyor, we noticed that there are less selection. Yesterday, there were calamari, sashimi, but today, there were none, and we found that the sushi seem abit smaller. It took about 10 plates of sushi to fill me up.