Hot Pot Restaurant | 4everdiscovering

Hot Pot = A Hot Spot To Pig Out

Something About All-You-Can-Eat Restaurants Make the Holidays a Little Brighter

To make sure we spent our holidays like we would back in Canada, Emily and I made sure to eat just as much as we would if we were home for Christmas dinner. We kept telling ourselves it was okay to splurge because “it’s the holidays!” A little comfort food always makes me feel better, no matter how much it costs or how much I eat! We’ve been to a couple of all-you-can-eat restaurants here (no like East Side Mario’s though), and have still not learned to pace ourselves when we go. You think I would learn my lesson, but I’m always so excited at the amount of meat brought to the table, I eat too fast and too much! Some things will never change.

Hot Pot is a very popular style of restaurant in Taiwan. It is usually all-you-can-eat and is best eaten with a large group of people. Similar to all-you-can-eat sushi at home,when you have lots of people at hot pot, you can try a lot of new dishes! Emily and I tried going to a hot pot restaurant before, but were told it was too hot to go. FInally, now that the temperature has begun to drop a little, we got the approval to finally try it out. On a Friday night after school, 8 of us met at MaLa hot pot restaurant and prepared to feast.

Before I get into the details of what we ate, let me give you a brief idea of what going to a hot pot restaurant is like. Just like all-you-can-eat sushi, you are given a menu and a paper to check off everything you want to try. Luckily the menus were translated to English so we could see what we were ordering (some of it I wish I didn’t know). Once you decide what you want to eat, the waiter comes to take the paper and pour two different flavours of soup broth into pot in the middle of the table. The flavours are separated by a metal barrier, so we had a ‘regular’ flavour, and a spicy one. When to food is delivered to the table, it is all raw; you cook it yourself in the soup. It kind of reminded me of eating fondue; you put whatever you want in the pot and wait for it to cook. We just get adding whatever came to the table and made it like a free-for-all. Eat whatever you want!

Here is a list of different types of foods we ordered at our first hot pot experience:

Massive amounts of meat (we had towers of trays of meat to be cooked). We had everything from beef, to lamb, to pork a.k.a. “Bacon”. We love meat.
Vegetables like broccoli, cabbage, and baby corns
Squid balls (always a good choice)
Lobster and cheese balls (even a better choice)
Cheese dumplings
Baby shrimps and prawns
Crab still served in its shelf (it was a lot of work to get a little meat...slurping was allowed)
Duck blood (looks like a dark liver)
Cow stomach …. It was chewy
Chicken testicles. Please don’t ask, they were not very good. I will not be eating them again.

Although most of the food we ordered I had tried before, there was still those few dishes like the cow stomach, duck blood, and chicken (cough cough) testicles that were a new experience. I wouldn’t necessarily try them all again, but it’s always an adventure to try them. Who knows, maybe testicles are your favourite food in the world, but you would never know because you never tried them. However, I can confirm, they are not my favourite food. Now I know.

The best part about eating at hot pot was the fact that it was all-you-can-eat. It almost felt free because we were eating so much; we definitely got our money's worth here. For $700 NT (about $30), we stuffed our faces and unbuckled our belts to make all the food fit. The catch is you only have the table reserved for 2 hours, so you can’t pace yourself too slow. That’s how they stay in business; otherwise, they would be losing too much money on one table eating everything for hours on hours. As soon as you walk into MaLa, you have to walk past a huge counter just serving Haagen Dazs ice cream. I mean after my three bowls, I think I got my money’s worth just in ice cream! It isn’t cheap, especially when you are paying for the good stuff. Now, the absolute BEST part about this restaurant is the unlimited about of BOOZE you want. You can help yourself to Taiwan beer on tap, bottles of red and white wine, and champagne. We thought the all-you-can-eat food was crazy, until we found out it was also all-you-can-drink! After a long week of report cards, this was exactly what I needed to end my Friday night. You can probably guess I was stuck in a food coma for days after.

Our first hot pot experience was nothing short of spectacular. We apparently ate at one of the best restaurants around, so now Emily and I have high expectations for our next hot pot night. It is a great way to try new foods, and spend some quality time with good friends. It is a deal for the amount of food, ice cream, and booze you get, so we know for a fact we will be back. The only problem is you don’t want to drink too much and fill up before you finish all the delicious food. I felt like I was at an all-inclusive resort and had to choose between my two favourite things: food and alcohol. This time, food won. The best part is if you don’t finish everything you order, you don’t get charged extra. It’s not like all-you-can-eat sushi at home where you have to pay for what you don’t eat. We didn’t have to bring any tupperware or sneak any food in napkins to save a few bucks! What a luxury it was. Next time I will make sure to wear my stretchy pants and fast before we go. I know what to expect; let’s see if the restaurant can handle this Canadian stomach again!