Located at 10 E Wilmot St in Richmond Hill

After our highly successful Motives make-up party (in which I also became the owner of my very own custom made foundation to match my exact skin tone) and also a highly successful birthday cake surprise for James, we headed to Kim Tao Hot Pot for, you guessed it, hot pot!

I hadn’t been to Kim Tao before for this do-it-yourself type of dining and was excited to compare it to other places I’ve been to.

Good thing our dear friend Carol called to make a reservation for the 10-15 of us on this Saturday evening ahead of time otherwise it would have been difficult to get a table for so many people.  An early reservation also allowed us the luxury of dining in one of their private rooms.

Hot pot — ideally one pot for four people

Like most hot pot places, you first choose what kind of soup base you want and then you check off the things you want to eat on a sheet of paper so that the server can bring the raw ingredients to you to cook in the hot pots.

Order sheet

We had three pots running with clear and satay soup bases, half and half.  Yum!

Happy pots

Into the pot these go!

Since we were a big group, we naturally ordered a lot of food.  Unfortunately, not all the items that we ordered actually arrived.  This is the problem about these all-you-can-eat places: sometimes, the servers will “accidentally” forget to place your order and not bring everything to your table.  I know people know what I’m talking about, especially in Asian-run restaurants.

I remember being very happy with the service that was being provided at 100 Degrees Hot Pot and the servicing here at Kim Tao paled in comparison.

Thus, even though we ordered a lot of food, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of us left with a not-so-full stomach.

A really tiny white egg in which you can add to your DIY sauce

Spare ribs and rice scooped out from the hot black pot

The food we did get were average-tasting.  The selection of sauces that we got in which to make our personal sauce was also lacking.  What was good was we got to order a full pot of rice with spare ribs.

At the end, we got dessert — mango sago and taro sago.  What was interesting was that the true colours of this Asian restaurant were revealed:  Since we had asked to have both sago flavours, the restaurant had the guts to pour only the majority of the taro sago into the bowls and then put the rest of the mango sago dessert into the remaining bowls and give us a dispenser for us to pour ourselves!  I know it’s eco-friendly to reuse the bowls after we finished eating the taro sago to pour the mango sago into the bowls we just used, but I’ve never seen this at a restaurant before.  Usually, restaurants are not so stingy and will give you more than enough bowls for those who asked for the dessert.  It was quite interesting lol.

Dessert: taro sago & mango sago

Despite this not being the best hot pot place in my opinion, I had a lot of fun eating with our friends and enjoying the night, which is what truly matters at the end. 🙂

Happy birthday, James!

For my foodies, I’m sure that many people have come here for hot pot before.  What is your opinion of the restaurant?