Made in China Hot Pot located at 505 Highway 7 East in Markham

January 1, 2018:  First dinner of the year at a new hot pot restaurant!  I hadn’t been to this location of Made in China before.  I’ve been to the one at Midland and Finch a long time ago.

Made in China is an average hot pot restaurant.  It used to be one of the few hot pot restaurants in the GTA and very popular for its affordable meals and typical hot pot items.  Nowadays, with the birth of more upscale hot pot places like Morals Village or ChongQing Liuyishou Hot Pot, returning back to a no frills place like Made in China Hot Pot is a return to simplistic roots.

Pretty interior

We arrived at 5:40 p.m. ish.  Although they have three kinds of hot pot combo sets available, they only had the Angus Beef Deluxe Seafood Hot Pot Buffet at that night.  We also chose our double soup base that was included with the combo set.  We chose the two free broths:  Satay and Preserved Egg & Cilantro.

Hot pot sets

Soup base options

Items to choose from

Moving condiment tray to make-your-own sauce

Our platter of seafood arrived first followed by the split pot.  I liked that the stovetop was consistently hot throughout the night and didn’t require much fiddling with.  The satay soup broth wasn’t very spicy either.

The seafood was pretty good.  Out of this platter, I especially liked the hand-formed fish meat and the salmon.

Seafood platter as part of the combo set

Satay and Preserved Egg & Cilantro split pot

The selection of hot pot items at Made in China are significantly fewer than those of the higher-end hot pot restaurants, but like I said, it’s not terrible and includes the bare minimum of fish balls, tofu, beef, lamb, chicken wings, veggies, etc.  It’s all very standard choices.

The only problem was that after we submitted our order sheet with the items we wanted, it took an awfully long time for the vegetables to arrive.   Everything else from the order sheet had arrived except for the green leafy vegetables.  We had wanted to eat more vegetables that night but since the leafy greens took so much longer to arrive, we ended up being more full with the other items than we would have liked to be.

Good portions of food

Beef and lamb slices

I liked that they provided a free beverage.  Naturally, I chose the plum juice (always so fitting at hot pot meals!).

Plum juice

Other than the late arrival of the green vegetables to our table, I actually have to say that the service here was very good.  The male server was very attentive and alert to when we needed him to bring items for us.  It seemed like they really cared about customers.

Hot pot yums!

This was a nice meal to try a Made in China hot pot restaurant.  In the future though, if I want more selection and unique hot pot items, I’ll opt for the higher-end hot pot restaurants (which are so plentiful these days in the Markham and Richmond Hill area).