Spicy Mafia located at 20 Gibson Drive, Unit 111A in Markham

Last night, I had the pleasure to dine at one of the newest hot pot restaurants in Markham called Spicy Mafia!  Spicy Mafia is located at 20 Gibson Drive and takes over the spot where HOPO used to be. Spicy Mafia is a hot pot restaurant that specializes in mini hot pot and noodle pots customized for the customer in individual pots!  This means that you get to choose your own soup base, your own meats, dipping sauces, and noodles!  There’s no need to share or for chopsticks to mix and swirl here (if you don’t like that kind of thing) because you get to eat from your own pot!  It was a very fun experience and I was glad to be able to try it out.

My mom and I arrived at around 6:45 p.m. on a Wednesday night and there were already a LOT of people inside Spicy Mafia.  In fact, there were at least seven or eight people lining up and waiting for a table too.  Luckily for us, since it was a tasting, we already had a table reserved for us.

The creative storefront of Spicy Mafia

We were quickly given a run-down of how the mini hot pot combo and noodle pot combos would work as well as their additional toppings, snacks, and drinks.  We each chose our soup base, staple food (noodles), meat, dipping sauce, drinks, and snacks from the menu and before long, we received our mini hot pots and ingredients.

They have free wifi

In case you are not aware, hot pot is a Chinese cultural food experience where all the ingredients come to the table raw and you dip them into the boiling hot soup in front of you in order to cook it to eat.  You can combine various dipping sauces too to flavour your meats and vegetables.  It’s the perfect meal when it is cold outside since you are cooking and eating everything hot and fresh from the pot.

Spicy Mafia has free wifi and their restaurant is decorated so nicely, depicting casual “street” characters on the big wall mural as well as on their menus.  Also, they have a DJ that made special mix music for the restaurant — when we were there though, there were holiday music playing for the season.

Look at that nicely designed mural!

Signature Spicy Soup Base. $12.99
-with included toppings, meat, staple food, 2 dipping sauces

For my mini hot pot, I chose the Housemade Porkbone Soup Base, Rice Vermicelli as the staple food, New Zealand Spring Lamb for the meat, and Housemade Sesame Sauce and Housemade Spicy Oil for the dipping sauces.  The included toppings were Boutique luncheon meat, Japanese crab meat, Hong Kong style red sausage, whole shrimp, tofu puff, napa cabbage, lettuce, lotus root, sweet corn, seaweed, and enoki.

My mom chose the Signature Spicy Soup Base, Rice Vermicelli, Certified Angus Beef Slice, Coriander, and Housemade Fermented Bean Curd Sauce.

4 Dipping Sauces: Housemade Spicy Oil, Coriander, Housemade Sesame Sauce, Housemade Fermented Bean Curd Sauce

Included toppings: Boutique luncheon meat, Japanese crab meat, Hong Kong style red sausage, whole shrimp, tofu puff, napa cabbage, lettuce, lotus root, sweet corn, seaweed, enoki

New Zealand Spring Lamb & Certified Angus Beef Slice

To view the menu in full, you can click here for the pdf version.

Mini hot pot combo menu

Noodle pot combo menu

Fresh Watermelon Juice & Creamy Thai Coconut Slush. $4.99 each

I chose the Creamy Thai Coconut Slush for my drink and it was really coconuty and refreshing!  This drink was extremely helpful when it came to dousing down some spicy food that night.

My mom chose the Fresh Watermelon Juice which was also very refreshing and tasted of freshly juiced watermelon.  I really enjoyed this one as well!

We chose two snacks to share too.  I really like the selection of snacks that they have on their menu!  They were very unique snacks that I have never seen anything else.

We tried the Fried Pork Chop served with Tartar Sauce.  This was really good fried pork chop; perfectly fried so that it was crispy on the outside and the slices were very thin too.  The tartar sauce (TATA sauce) was unique as well.

Fried Pork Chop served with Tartar Sauce. $3.99

The Chinese Hot Pepper Chicken (Szechuan Special) was indeed a unique dish.  The pieces of chicken were so tender and moist.  They were topped with green hot peppers sauce which were ma la spicy.  This meant that it left a lot of numbing feeling on the lips after you ate it.  The refreshing cold drinks sure helped to douse the heat for this dish! ^_^  Despite the heat, this snack is a must-try!

Chinese Hot Pepper Chicken (Szechuan Special). $5.99

Our spread of food was so beautiful when everything arrived to the table!

Mmm, delicious!

We had a grand time cooking our food in the mini hot pots and enjoying the meal.  It was a lot of fun to have hot pot in a miniature version.  The servers were attentive and made sure to come around often to add hot soup into our pots when the soup was running low.  I really liked the environment of Spicy Mafia.  It was casual, comfortable, modern, and perfect for anyone — there were a lot of families with young children as well as young adults there too enjoying the meal.

In addition to the mini hot pot combo, you can also select the noodle pot combo.  This combo includes a soup base, noodles, and 12 free seasonal toppings!  It doesn’t include the meat essentially when compared to the hot pot combo but you can always add in additional toppings like seafood, meat, soybean made dishes, or more vegetables for $1.50 each! 🙂

Signature Spicy Soup Base with two chillies of spice!

Spicy Mafia is currently running a BOGO Buy One Get One Promotion from the time of posting until Sunday, December 11, 2016.  Thus, if you want to try out this new modern hot pot restaurant, go before the 11th!  Spicy Mafia serves quality food of the same caliber as Morals Village (high quality and delicious all-you-can-eat hot pot) yet it is in a set combo so that means you don’t have to overeat and a restaurant you can come again and again to enjoy decent portions of hot pot.  They are open every day from 12 p.m. until 11 p.m.  That means you can come for lunch or dinner!

Thank you to Spicy Mafia for inviting us to try out your food! 😀

FTC Disclaimer:  Although Spicy Mafia reached out and invited me to a complimentary tasting, the opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of the company.