Liuyishou Hot Pot - Scarborough (Chinese)

Liuyishou Hot Pot is located 4188 Finch Ave E. at Midland Ave. in Scarborough, Toronto's eastern borough. Liuyishou has a few locations and I reviewed the one on Spadina prev.  reusable chopsticks thankfully. Pop is canned $2 each not AYCD.

We went with the “mild” house special soup base, it was still rather spicy and too much so for Mishy's liking. She did not like the broth and said it made everything taste like soap. Even though the broth was supposed to be mild, there were still many chilies in it. I managed to remove most of them with a slotted spoon. We tinkered with it, not only removing the chilies but also adding soy sauce and oyster sauce to it and it became excellent. Since there is the sauce/spice counter, feel free to improvise. Even the spinach was excellent coming out of it.

Unlimited fried chicken wings are also available self-serve at the spice buffet and they were excellent. Spring roll is also quite good and not too oily. Fish cake was good but Mishy did not like that either. As would be expected all of the chicken (breast) and beef (Angus, marbled) was very good. As well I enjoyed the sliced pork, fish cakes and the little shrimp bags. Deep fried pork is already cooked and doesn’t need to go in the hotpot. In addition, there was green beef noodle, cheese balls, matsutake mushrooms, spinach, broccoli and sweet potato and everything was noticeably fresh and good quality.

For deserve there are little cakes and fruit. The cakes are probably made offsite as they seem to be the same brand as with many other AYCEs. The mango cake was very fresh and not like the other ones. I loved the coconut cakes as well, even though Mishy compared them to suntan lotion. As well they offer one coconut, honeydew or mango Melona bar much like the grill houses.

All-day weekend price is $31.95... many AYCEs these days seem to be going with all-days pricing due to to everything being generally more expensive and I prefer it as there’s no time pressure. This price level is standard nowadays. I can half-forgive the overhot “mild” broth as a cultural difference, and although I did need to umami it up myself, at least the options were available. Everything was fresh and although I think Mishy is off hotpots I still enjoyed my lunch.

Rating: 7.5 – 8 / 10