Jun Yuan: Hot Pot

Hot Pot season is upon us! Okay, who am I kidding? For many people in Vancouver, hot pot season spans the entire year… even during the hottest summer day.

But I digress… Hot Pot joints in Vancouver has really started to sprout up everywhere – they’re almost as popular as sushi joints. Jun Yuan is a hot pot restaurant located on Victoria Drive near E 41st, next to the BMO.

For $21.95 per person, you pretty much get an AYCE menu of self-cooked meats, seafood, and veggies.

The caveat is that you have to pay extra for the soup base (most are $7.95 and you pay $9.95 for two soup bases). If you’re looking for the wild reishi (a type of mushroom), you’ll have to pay an extra $29.95 for that soup base.

In terms of sauces, they give you satay and soy sauce but you have to pay extra if you want to order some of their other dipping sauce items such as cilantro, sesame sauce, chili sauce, or garlic.

We wound up ordering the sliced premium beef, the premium beef cube, sliced sirloin beef, sliced lamb meat, sliced premium pork, fish slices, shrimp, baby cuttlefish, squid, and imitation crab meat (we avoided most of the offal). In addition, we ordered the oysters (limit of 2 per person) which turned out to be huge! We rounded out our order with some homemade dumplings, wontons, fish balls, veggies, and udon.

They do offer some cooked snacking food like the fried prawns and squid – both of which turned out to be rather good.

Overall, the food wasn’t bad. Like most hot pot places, we had difficulty fitting all of the food on our table. Since our table only had one heating unit, they had to bring out a portable unit and stretch an electrical cord for it across the floor (didn’t look very safe).

5728 Victoria Drive
Vancouver, BC

www.junyuan.ca