Does Vancouver need another self serve hot pot spot? How about one in the Joyce-Collingwood area, that puts French fries into their pot, and specializes in Thai flavours?
This is Super Thai, where your choices are whether you want it wet or dry. For their wet hot pot you pick up an empty scooping pot and tongs and get to picking. You gathering your own ingredients for cooking from a selection of meat, vegetable, fungus, and starch kept cool over ice. You can pile it on high as you are willing to pay by weight. It is $19.99/lb, with your choice of broth at the end.
Like all the other self serve hot pot spots the set up and ingredients are the same, they even appear to use the same type of pots and tongs. As for ingredients there weren’t any stand outs, or anything that I haven’t seen else where, outside of corn by the kernel and a wrapped dumpling that looked like a flower with its red trim. Where Super Thai diversifies is with their broths with options like creamy coconut laksa, Hong Kong style satay, fish maw chicken broth, pepper crush malatang with peanuts, Japanese miso, and Vietnamese beef.
But I suggest paying a little more and getting one of their “super Thai” broths at $4.39/100g. From the looks of things, this appears to be a line of premium broths, or at least visually on their televised menu. This includes their best selling signature tom yum broth and a Tom kha broth. Since you have come to a specifically Thai inspired hot pot spot, you might as well lean in.
Similarly you can also frame your meal with Thai ice tea to start and Thai ice tea ice cream to end. If you dine in before 5pm your meal comes with a complimentary drink. The Thai ice tea is an upgrade for more, but you can get it with boba pearls.
Dessert is also complimentary, it comes with a choice between the above mentioned Thai ice tea soft serve in a sugar cone, a cup of red bean over egg pudding, or Taiwanese style ice jelly served in a brown sugar syrup.
And the freebies don’t end there, as you wait for your pot to be made, you are given a dish of fresh fried and crispy shrimp chips to tide you over and warm up your mouth and appetite with. For this alone I would steer towards Super Thai for.
If you don’t want to pick all your ingredients or are feeling overwhelmed by the options, you can order one of their dry hot pots. This is done on a laminated card that you simply check off boxes on. Your choice comes from size of serving, type of seasoning and how hot you want it, which protein do you want it to feature, and if you want any add-ons at cost. I went with the Sichuan mala spicy with pork rib dry pot. I chose the ribs instead of chicken wings, prawn, pork intestines, tender beef, and crispy pork. I got it as mild as possible, but there is also a garlic savoury sauce that isn’t spicy or a super spicy savoury sauce. To this I added on my favourite kelp knots and yam noodles. Each serving comes with celery, lotus root, potato, onion, and cauliflower; with Ingredients varying by season. I found that it was mostly onion and celery as filler.
I was surprised by, but learned to enjoy the crinkle cut French fries in the mix. I liked how they felt snackish and easily soaked up the flavours. Flavours that I liked, but did find on the salty side. I would have liked some rice with my meal, to help buffer some of the salt and chilli. The noodles I added on didn’t do much, they were fully coated and sitting amongst everything else generously seasoned in whole peppercorn balls and chopped chillies.
Worth mentioned is that they also have a self serve sauce bar with sauces, topping, and fresh chopped garnishes. Although honestly, everything was so flavourful as is that we didn’t really need it.
In short, I enjoyed my meal and the setting we had it in. Whereas other hot pot places feel dark and cramped, this one was spacious and bright in a stylish and calming sea green-blue. This was a room I didn’t mind lingering in. Where others felt like I am being rushed in and out to accommodate a string of people just there to eat, and not for the dining experience.
Super Thai Hot Pot 超级泰
3327 Kingsway, Vancouver, BC V5R 5K6
(778) 532-6707
superthaihotpot.com
