Hot Pot - Sun Fortune

Before the trip to Winnipeg, Marilyn had expressed a desire to go Hot Pot. Sometimes referred to as Steamboat or Chines fondue, Hot Pot refers to a style of cooking where you cook a combination of meats and vegetables in a poaching broth or liquid. Typically, hot pot restaurants are all you can eat where one orders a variety of ingredients to cook in the pot.

The only version of Hot Pot we could find in Winnipeg was at Sun Fortune. (For reference sakes, there is a version at Igi but they only offer it during the winter months). Being massive gluttons, we opted for the Deluxe Seafood Combination. The staff warned us that this is usually for a group of four.

One half of hot pot are the ingredients. The other half is the soup. You can see that Sun Fortune offers a number of choices. We decided to go with the Chicken Soup Base with Tofu and Vegetable. In our experience, the soup gets very dense and takes on the flavours of the ingredients so starting with a milder soup allows for the full taste of what you are dipping into them. There is also an option to have two soup bases (the pot is split into halves) if you are having difficulty deciding.

The broth looks very unassuming. Deep inside there are bits of silken tofu.

We were absolutely shocked when we saw the amount of food that came to us. This metal plate of goodies filled up most of our table. It consisted of: shrimp (frozen), basa fish filets, scallops, mussels, an assortment of fish balls and a homemade fish paste.

A number of dumplings were included (our favourite being the shrimp and pork dumplings) with fresh chicken, beef and lamb. All this was on top of more tofu (silken and tofu skin), Chinese vegetables, and button mushrooms.

Definitely more than enough for the two of us, we had to pack up more than half of this monstrosity. At the end of the meal, we both preferred having the All You Can Eat option. We understand that this style of Hot Pot allows a restaurant to control portions but the plate came with too many items we would not have ordered normally. Thus these became a waste, both for our tummies, and for the restaurant. Here's to hoping that an establishment opens up a more typical style of Hot Pot.