Yuan’s Hot Pot: Chinese skewer hot pot in Richmond
Hot pot culture is seriously popping off in Vancouver. It seems like in the last few years, everyone just loves hot pot!
As a Chinese person, I have had hot pot many times in my life but I have never actually tried skewer hot pot. I am more used to Chinese BBQ skewer places like Happy Tree House, Grill Party or Jing Tan Grill House.
Yuan’s Hot Pot is a Chinese hot pot restaurant that specializes in skewers and they are conveniently located inside Aberdeen Centre in Richmond. They do a large shared hot pot so it is not individual style but I actually find this to be more authentic. We came here for dinner for 2 people and here is our experience.
Yuan’s Hot Pot
Aberdeen Centre, 4151 Hazelbridge Way #2792, #2F, Richmond, BC V6X 4J7
The vibe
Yuan’s Hot Pot is kind of hidden in the corner of Aberdeen Centre where a bunch of other restaurants are located. The entrance is quite cute with panda figurines out front and the inside is very spacious! There is proper air ventilation above every table and they also have private dining rooms for larger groups.
As a table of 2, we were seated at a booth seating with a lot of room and a nice view with floor to ceiling windows.
Food and drinks review
Disclaimer: We received a free combo for 2 people + 2 drinks for an Instagram collaboration.
Prices are in CAD and rounded to the nearest dollar for simplicity.
Lime-lemon plum soda + Peach soda ($4 each)
For our 2 drinks, we went with the peach soda and our server recommended the lime-lemon plum soda. Both came in a really large glass.
Out of the 2, we both liked the lime-lemon plum soda more. It had a refreshing and sour taste and it was fizzy, making it a nice pairing to the hot pot skewers 👍.
Combo A or C for 2 people ($84)
Yuan’s Hot Pot is known for having all of their skewers be 99 cents if you order al le carte (really good price!) but we got to try their dinner combo.
For the dinner combos, they have combos A, B, and C available. A and C are both for 2 people and are priced the same, the main difference is that A has a spicy broth and some of the meat are marinated with spices while C is a tomato broth and the meat are not marinated with spices. Combo B is for 4 people.
My husband and I actually don’t do well with Sichuan foods because sometimes it is too spicy for us, so we opted for combo C not-spicy instead.
Non spicy broth – tomato + nutritious bone broth
So here we have the 2 broths in a large bowl split. At this point, we actually noticed belatedly that maybe we should have gotten the spicy broth because in both combos, there is 1 soup that is not spicy (the nutritious pork broth).
House special dipping sauce
Yuan’s Hot Pot has their own DIY sauce bar where you can choose all the ingredients for your dipping sauce, but our server helped us make the recommended/special dipping sauce that comes with the combo.
I have to say this sauce is so good 🤯! From what I could see, there is green onion, a lot of cilantro, garlic, oyster sauce and some red chilis. Our server also poured in about half a jar of their special sesame oil and we added a ladle of the bone broth.
Meat skewers
These are all the skewers that come with combo A or C:
- Spiced beef (10)
- Non-spicy chicken knuckles (5)
- Non-spicy pork tenderloin (10)
- Chicken breast (5)
- Black pepper beef (10)
I was actually shocked at the amount of raw meat skewers they presented to us because I didn’t notice they all came in orders of 5+.
Veggie skewers
Here we have a full look at everything that comes with the dinner combo.
The vegetable/misc. skewers include:
- Enoki mushrooms
- Black fungus (2)
- Beef balls (2)
- Quail eggs (2)
- Spam (2)
- Tofu gluten (2)
- Fried bread stick (2)
- Chinese cabbage (2)
- Tonghao (2)
- Potato (2)
- Lotus root (2)
Add it to the pot!
Basically, you just add the skewers you wanna eat to your pot! Again, I have never done this so I was a little nervous at first to try the chicken skewer because what if it was raw 💀? Each skewer takes a few minutes to fully cook.
My favourite skewers were:
- Pork tenderloin – these skewers were big! I am used to BBQ skewers being quite small but there’s a lot of meat in these skewers and it was so tender.
- Chicken knuckles – really liked the crunch of the cartilage, added some good texture
- Chicken breast – not dry at all!
- Chinese cabbage – this surprised me because it’s just veggie but it soaked up all the broth and mixed with the dipping sauce was so good 🤯!
- Enoki mushrooms – really good in the tomato broth
- Quail eggs – burst of flavour!
- Lotus root – nice crunch
Final thoughts
Loewe’s rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
We were so full from our hot pot dinner at Yuan’s Hot Pot. As 2 adults, we were unable to finish all the skewers and food that came with the dinner combo.
This was my first time having hot pot skewers and I was mostly surprised at just how tender the meats were. I thought it would be bland and dry because I’m more of a fried foods girlie, but with the amazing dipping sauce, the meat skewers were delicious and large portions. The dipping sauce – so good 😍! Even the veggies tasted good with it. I will dip anything in it and eat it.
Service was wonderful – really high rating for service especially since my impression of Chinese restaurants is that sometimes the service is not that good. Servers were always attentive and I noticed they actually pour different broths (i.e. they pour tomato broth into tomato, and pork broth into pork). I see a lot of hot pot places refilling broth with a basic one, regardless of if you get spicy or not.
Prices seem reasonable, especially for the amount of food you get. Even if you don’t get the dinner combo, 99 cent skewers sound like a good deal given that the skewers are pretty big.
If you haven’t tried hot pot skewers before and if you like spicy/Sechuan foods, I would recommend giving Yuan’s Hot Pot a try 👍.
Sincerely, Loewe