Cattle Hot Pot Restaurant 牛仔火鍋

A rainy night in Vancouver calls for hot pot and I want to kill my cravings until I am sick of it. Any hot pot restaurant gets extremely busy in the winter, thirty minutes to an hour and a half wait? No thanks! Plus, most AYCE hot pot restaurants are the same to me and the only reason I visit certain ones, are for certain dishes. Why Cattle Hot Pot? I like their deep fried tofu skin and deep fried buns! However, I try to avoid coming here because the restaurant is smaller than most hot pot restaurants and the wait times are quite long. Also, the waitresses are not very friendly either.

Cattle Hot Pot is a restaurant that gets busy fast, or there are the random dinner times when they only have two seated tables (which happened the next day when we visited Old Buddie's Seafood). The restaurant has around ten to twelve tables for two to four, and four larger tables for six or more. I definitely recommend reservations for those who have no patience or hate waiting. Fortunately we were lucky and there was one table available. Unfortunately though, that one table took twenty five minutes for someone to finally clean up.

ADULT $18.95 CHILDREN (3-11) $14.95

BROTH $7.00, MIX $10.00, POP 2/$1.00

SOY SAUCE, SPICY CHILLI, SATAY ($0.60) AND CILANTRO ($0.60).

FREE RANGE CHICKEN HERBAL BROTH AND SICHUAN HOT & SPICY BROTH ($10.00).

After waiting twenty five minutes for a table to be cleaned and set up, we waited another twenty minutes for the soup bases. The free range chicken herbal broth tastes like what it is, a herbal chicken broth. The herbal taste stayed in the broth throughout the whole dinner and I was pretty pleased, definitely one of the better herbal broths. The herbal broth has all the proper ingredients such as wolf berries, logan, jujube and a few kind of roots. For the sichuan hot and spicy broth, the broth has a mild to barely medium spiciness and tastes salty (not as salty as Little Sheep Mongolian's). After waiting another twenty minutes, our dishes finally came. This is probably the longest time I ever had to wait at any hot pot restaurant, including busier ones. The waitress even had to add more broth before the food came.

FISH BALLS IN CURRY SAUCE AND PRESERVED MEAT ON PLAIN RICE. 

The curry sauce has a light curry spice taste and the fish balls taste luke warm (you would think the fish balls would taste hot after waiting twenty minutes eh?). Next, the preserved meat on plain rice is surprisingly made to order. The rice smells as well as tastes like smoked meat, and the preserved meat tastes tender.

SLICED PORK, LAMB, BEEF RIB EYE, BEEF SIRLOIN AND FRIED TOFU PUFFS. 

All the meats are quite chewy and not very tasty, except for the lamb. The beef rib eye is sliced slightly too thick and does not taste as tender as it should. For the beef sirloin, the slices are too thick and tastes stiff.

MUSSELS, SLICED BASA FILLET, PUMPKIN, LO BOK, CORN, FRESH BEAN CURD STICK, CILANTRO PORK DUMPLING, (SOME KIND OF BALLS WE DID NOT ORDER), TAIWAN PORK DUMPLING AND FRESH BEAN CURD.
Everything tastes like what it is and the corn is previously frozen so it does not taste very good. Also, the fresh bean curd stick is not comparable to the fresh bean curd sheets which the restaurant offered before. As for the dumplings, we never got a chance to try them.

DACE PASTE, TONG HO AND SPINACH. 

The dace paste tastes slightly overly salty.

FRIED BEAN CURD STICK AND DEEP FRIED BUNS WITH CONDENSED MILK. 

The fried bean curd stick tastes crunchy as well as hallow, however, I liked it a lot more when they had deep fried tofu skin! Those tasted juicy, slightly crispy and delicious. Next, the deep fried buns taste soft as well as pillowy and has a nice crisp exterior. Cattle Hot Pot provides condensed milk which of course is normal, but Clay Pot does not.

ENOKI MUSHROOM, KING OYSTER MUSHROOM, CHICKEN WINGS, SPAM AND BLACK FUNGUS. 

INSTANT NOODLES AND WONTONS. 

The wontons have a thick skin, tastes too doughy, and the meat tastes stiff as well as chewy.

POSITIVES

- Cheapest canned pop at an AYCE restaurant (2/$1.00!)

- Lots of choices on the menu, not limited at all

- Herbal soup broth is prettyyyy good

- No bad attitudes from the waitress (unlike the previous ones) or owner

NEGATIVES

- Meats taste chewy

- Service is typical as well as non existent and food takes extremely long to come out

- Slow kitchen for a small restaurant (even when the restaurant was empty later on, the kitchen was still slow)

LITTLE THINGS

- Parking on Alexandra sucks

- Food takes too long and I rather go to another hot pot restaurant. However, if I was in the area, did not know what to eat and the restaurant was empty, I would walk in (would probably choose Chubby Lamb which is a few doors down as a first choice though)

Food: 2.5/5

Service: 2.5/5