Landmark Hot-Pot House

Landmark Hot-Pot House @ 2043 Cambie St.

Last night I had my first hot pot experience. Kweepo told me this was one of the most highly rated hot pot places in Vancouver, and I was interested in experiencing this classic in an authentic setting.

Landmark is located near the Queen Elizabeth Park near the end of the commercial zone, right by the skytrain station.

The interior is spacious and open. The place was packed when we arrived. Almost all of the tables were big banquet-style tables. Solo diners are clearly implicitly discouraged from eating hot pot. The hot pot is by its nature a communal activity.

People who doesn't read Chinese are also implicitly discouraged. At our table we found a bewildering array of menus, most of which are entirely in Chinese. Luckily Kweepo understands Chinese. Most of the people at the restaurant appeared to be Cantonese-speakers, including the waiters. The food came out promptly, since it doesn't entail any kind of cooking, but they managed to forget our drinks.

Servers run around the place like ants, but it's oddly difficult to get their attention, which is typical of Cantonese restaurants. When you want them, they're suddenly absent. I was staring out at the room for five minutes without being able to make eye contact with a single employee, despite there being about 15 waiters in the place.

On closer inspection, there turned out to be one main menu, two menus advertising special items like Kobe beef, and one special item menu. This was the main menu:

This was the special item menu:

Ordering was a frustrating experience. It was my first time eating hot pot, so I knew nothing of the procedure, or what it entailed, and was hoping for some guidance. Not only does the menu explain absolutely nothing about the procedure by which to order, the waiters aren't helpful either. We found ourselves completely on our own, forced to randomly choose a bunch of ingredients, on the assumption that that is how it's done.

Yeah, sure, it's hot pot, not rocket science, but it's also not obvious, on top of which the Chinese-only menus were a little off-putting. A little friendly guidance would have gone a long way. The waiter asked us what kind of broth we wanted, but we couldn't find anything on the menu indicating broth choices, and instead just followed the waiter's recommendation. I had no idea what it was I was getting into.

There's a lot of choices in terms of ingredients, and I didn't know exactly how much we were getting of each dish, so it was difficult to determine how many dishes to order. You've got a whole page of seafood items, a page of meat items, a page of vegetable items, a page of noodles, etc. I was able to gather from looking at the other tables that we were to pick and choose a number of items, and these would be brought out, uncooked, to the table, individually, on plates, and we would then throw them into the boiling broth in the middle of the table and eat at our discretion.

We wound up ordering five items: lamb, pork, fish, tofu, and rice noodles. We also ordered a side-dish of sticky rice. We hoped this would be enough and not too much. It turned out to be slightly too much, as we barely finished everything and were completely stuffed.

The price: about $60, or $30 each. Considering we weren't completely satisfied with the food, we felt it was a little too expensive, but that's the price at hot pot places I guess.

One good thing is that they brought out a big pot of loose-leaf jasmine tea, which was on the house of course. We had to order cold drinks, though, because the food was so hot, so we didn't drink much of the tea.

In addition, they have a bunch of little sauces on the table before bringing anything out. One is a peanut sauce, one is a satay sauce, and one is soy sauce. We weren't told what was to go in what. We had to randomly try dipping the various ingredients.

The first thing to come out was the broth. The waiter had mentioned satay, chicken and pork, but I assume it was one broth. Only when this arrived did I realize it was actually two broths: satay broth and chicken-pork broth.

You've got to be careful to not have the heat on too high or you can burn your hands on the flame. Pretty dangerous.

Next the meats started coming out. The pork:

The lamb:

The noodles:

In addition to pork, lamb and noodles, we also got one order of fish and tofu, and a side-order of sticky rice. The table was fully loaded once everything arrived:

One serious question I have is about the safety of bringing out and handling raw meat. Your chopsticks are basically touching the raw meat and going into your mouth. I assume the meat is safe, but it just strikes me as going against everything I've ever learned about washing your hands thoroughly after handling raw meat so as not to convey any bacteria that might be present into your mouth. But the Chinese have been eating hot pot for centuries, so who am I to argue with time-tested tradition?

Now then, we had all this food on our table, but I was still not sure what to do. So we did the obvious thing and just threw things into the boiling broth one piece at a time, took them out, dipped them in sauce and ate them. We tried every conceivable configuration - lamb cooked in satay broth and dipped in peanut sauce; pork cooked in chicken broth and dipped in satay sauce; etc. You name it. But none of them seemed quite right. The broth didn't impart much taste to the ingredients, and none of the sauces seemed particularly to suit any of the ingredients.

The ingredients themselves were obviously very fresh, and it was pleasant to eat such freshly cooked ingredients. The freshness was in itself appealing to an extent. But without the proper sauce to complement the taste of the ingredients, no matter how fresh, those fresh ingredients felt somewhat wasted. So while we enjoyed the experience to an extent, and it was fun being so busy cooking everything constantly, it was also a bit frustrating and disappointing, because nothing here really blew me away.

Kweepo tells me that the hot pots in Beijing are much better, but I have no point of reference, so I have to judge hot pot based on my experience here, and that experience was good but not great.

I can only say that, if we did things correctly, as you're supposed to do when eating hot pot, then I think the idea of the hot pot itself just doesn't appeal to me. As a culinary experience, it leaves something to be desired. You wind up either overcooking the ingredients or undercooking them, and none of the sauces quite seem to go with the food. Perhaps you have to choose the right ingredients and broth to complement one another, and we didn't do this. I somehow doubt that.

Next time I'm in Beijing I plan to try authentic Beijing hot pot, but until then I'm good. Now I know.

After the meal they brought us each a glass of some kind of drink. Unsurprisingly, they didn't even bother to explain what it was.

I think it was some kind of a plum drink, but it had a smoked flavor that rankled in the back of my throat in a kind of nauseating manner and I was unable to drink it.

There was this funky sculpture next door to the restaurant:

A good landmark by which to look for the restaurant in case you miss the facade.

We had to park a few blocks away because the small parking lot was completely full, and on the way to the restaurant we spotted this funky house:

Wow. The owner of this house must be a real character. Right in the middle of an otherwise ordinary stretch of single-family homes is this strangely inappropriate thing that looks like nothing so much as a replica of the dwarves' house in Snow White, except more psychedelic. The roofer was either on drugs when he did this or is a big Gaudi fan.