Alexandra Road in Richmond aka Food Street - Cattle Hot Pot.

Our last night in Richmond, and what a better way to celebrate than heading down to the heart of Richmond's Golden Village to Alexandra Road - Vancouver’s "Wai Sek Kai" or "Food Street." In all the guide books and websites I’ve read, Richmond is said to have the best Chinese food outside of China.

Alexandra Road has over 200 Asian restaurants packed into three short blocks, including all different types of Asian cuisine including Cantonese, Szechuan, Shanghainese, Northern Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, Korean, Malaysian and more.  

We asked Lui (the guy who’s house we are staying in) which was a good place to eat. His answer was pretty simple. “They’re all good! If they weren’t, they just wouldn’t survive here. It’s all Asian people eating in them and if they suck, they close down.”

So we were pretty excited about the prospect of this “Food Street.”

It was unfortunately pouring with freezing cold rain (not an odd occurrence in Vancouver), so we didn’t take too much time walking around the restaurants. Some apparently don’t even look like restaurants. 

We found one that looked really busy, the Cattle hot pot, which we thought was good stuff for a Tuesday night.

A hot pot or steamboat is where you have a simmering metal pot of stock at the centre of the dining table on a hot plate - usually built into the table).  

The Cattle hot pot offers an ALL-U-Can-Eat menu, where you choose your soup – and then you can have unlimited amounts of thinly sliced meat, leafy vegetables, mushrooms, wontons, egg dumplings, and seafood. 

The menu is a bit like ordering dim sum, where you have a pencil and just tick away.

They bring the hot pot with the soup to your table and the raw ingredients. The hot pot is kept simmering on the table and you cook the ingredients yourself in the hot pot. 

We chose the satay soup. 

We had already had a few hotpots in Thailand so we knew what we needed to do this time!

On this image you can see sliced sirloin steak, marinated beef, chicken.

Fresh kings prawns, lotus root, rice noodles.

Medley of mushrooms.

Feshly made lobster balls, goyoza, wontons.

You also have a metal scoop each and a ladle for the table to scoop out your food when it’s cooked. You are also given extra chili to add to season your dish in your bowl.

In the background is bok choy and spinach.

The trick is to not chuck everything in at once (which is what we did the first time!). Think of what takes a bit longer to cook and add that first. You also just keep adding new bits of food in as you eat so the food is so freshly cooked the way you like it.

The waitresses are constantly coming around topping up your green tea and the soup which is great. You can also keep ordering more food to add to your hot pot.

The food was totally delicious. I was stuffed.

Double thumbs up for Food Street!