I was visiting a favourite of mine for all you can eat: $29.99 for both bbq and hot pot at Liuyishou Hotpot Burnaby. Plus the option to add-on all you can drink juice and pop as well.
The room was incredibly greasy with oils from the cooking process lingering in the air, and not enough vents to sort out the smoke. I was careful in my steps, as to not slide on the layer of grease that coated the floor.
We went with the two flavour soup base with a secondary layer that serves as the bbq platform. The traditional chongqing style spicy soup base is a must, as a spicy broth that comes with premium beef tallow to melt in. However, it is no longer in the shape of their cow mascot, that was nice to be able to watch melt down, but instead a shapeless brick with the same function.
That was our mild-spicy broth option, the other was their new Tom yum soup base. Although I don’t find any broth a big determinate of how things will taste, as I tend to dip everything generously into sauces anyways.
Lucky for me, Liuyishou has one of the largest sauce bars, with the most options. This location in particular has a drawer system that pulls out and allows for a bit more hygienic self/dispensing and containment in between uses. As always I just mix and match everything I like into one bowl, to later glob onto my meat and veg.
You order all the meat and seafood through the servers, going back to the menu as needed. We would ordering one of everything, passing in the items we didn’t like the sound of like “beef chest oil”, the sole fish filet and mussels, out of personal preferences.
The thicker cuts of meat, identified by the use of yellow lacured plates were meant for the bbq level. Thick-cut AAA beef chuck, Thick-cut premium beef brisket, Pork belly boneless, Fresh cut beef tongue, and Rocket squid tubes were all listed under the bbq menu, with the former most being for bbq only.
The bbq grill was a flat top tower standing up above the centre of the soup pot. It is heated by the steam of the hot pot boiling. A thin waxy doily is placed overtop and is what you use grill on. This is a smaller surface, so you spend more time hovering over the apparatus flipping and cooking as needed.
Not just limited to meat, you can basically cook anything on this, like you would a cast iron frying pan over a stove coil. We wanted to get creative and fry up our own fried rice utilizing items from the menu, but were stopped by management when they caught wind of our idea. In theory I am sure it would work if we combined a bowl of steamed rice, a raw egg, shrimp with head on, and luncheon meat together. But alas, we would not get to know for sure today.
For our soupy hot pot we ordered all their “hot pot must haves”, starting with the Liu’s beef and lamb platter that encircles the pot like a moat. Not only designed with pagentry in mind, but great for space saving.
There was also AAA Beef Flat lron, Sliced Premium American beef, Organic Pork Belly, Free-Range Chicken with Bone, and New Zealand Lamb that you dropped to boil up and cook. The thin slices of meat cooked quicker than the bone in chicken.
Some more unique ingredients included the Signature beef tripe, Shrimp paste in fried doughy stick, omasum tripe, and 3-Second Bean Curd Roll.
All the vegetables and noodles are self serve in their own waterlogged bar, kitty corner to the sauce bar.
My top picks were the Asian sweet potato noodle, Tofu Bean curd, Enoki mushroom, Lotus root, Quail eggs, and Black fungus. This was effective in keeping us satisfied until the meat came carved up.
We finished everything pictured and could of had more, however the truth of all you can eat hot pot is that eventually you get tired of the similar tastes and textures. Still a fun way to spend a leisurely afternoon with a friend, at a good price for value received.
Liuyishou Hotpot Burnaby
5507 Kingsway, Burnaby, BC V5H 2G3
(604) 559-9888
liuyishouna.com
