1 Pot seems to have the best ratings for a hot pot in Calgary, and each person gets their own pot which is a bonus. It’s in Chinatown, with a pay lot right next door ($5.25 for the evening), and there’s a fair amount of free parking on the streets nearby.
The hot pot experience here is all you can eat for $26 – a decent price considering you can get your fill of meat and seafood!
First, you have to choose your broth. There are the standard choices, plain broths, etc. and many more listed for $2 extra. These range from satay, szechuan, curry, miso, etc. etc.! The choice was awesome, although it was challenging to choose! I went with the satay, as it’s a flavour I know and figured it would go well with everything.
Next, you pick the food that you want by checking off what you want to order on a slip of paper. There’s a lot to choose from – beef, chicken, seafood, pastes, balls, veggies, noodles, rice, dumplings, spring rolls, etc. We chose a lot of meat and seafood to start and some veggies and noodles. We were still hungry so we got another slip of paper and went to town. Now, this is where I caution you! We got plenty of ‘fish balls’ in the second order. I don’t recommend this. For sure, try a few, although we all enjoyed the pastes over the balls. Getting plain meat, chicken and seafood really is the best bang for your buck here. The fish balls are too filling (full of flour or something). To note, the shrimp are not easy peel – when my one friend saw they still had all their legs and shell on them he let us eat his!
If you get noodles, put them in your ladle to cook or they’ll spread all over your hot pot. I got sticky rice and it was way undercooked – crunchy. I couldn’t eat it. Maybe they expected me to put it in the hot pot to cook some more but the ladle had holes in it so this wasn’t possible. Also, I got the long donut – it’s just really greasy dough so I don’t recommend it.
One of the most fun parts was figuring out what sauces to choose! There’s a long bar area with probably around 20 different sauces – some hot, some mild. You can make your own with oils, garlic, chili, cilantro, etc. or choose from a bunch of flavourful and delicious blends. The XO hot sauce is awesome, but very hot! The sesame sauce mixed with some chili sauce and garlic is super yummy.
All in all, this was an eating experience, not just dinner. I would highly recommend this as a fun evening out. To note, it’s better to order food in batches based on how hungry you still are. They will charge you for food left over; however they didn’t charge us for what we left. I will be back again!
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