With so many new restaurants popping up around Coquitlam, it's hard to keep track of which one is opened yet! I drove by Henderson Place and saw a lineup and open sign on Little Sheep, so I excitedly made plans to visit! We came around 5pm, hoping to avoid the crowds, and luckily we did!
Restaurant: Little Sheep Mongolian Hotpot (visit their website here)
Location: 1001-1163 Pinetree Way, Coquitlam
Cuisine: Hot Pot, Chinese
Price range: $21.98 per adult; $15.98 for 8-11 year old child; $10.98 for 4-7 year old child + $9.99 soup base
Date of visit: April 8, 2017
Atmosphere: 2/5
Staff/service: 2/5
Food variety: 4/5
Food quality: 3/5
Buck worthy? 1/5
So for starters, we had two choices for
soup bases ($9.99):
House Special Original and
House Special Spicy (or a half x half of the two), we opted for the original. It was a
milky broth that comes with many
herbs and loads of
garlic.
Sadly they got in the way of food and never got a chance to be fully cooked to get their flavors into the soup =( The broth is kind of like the soul of hot pot to me, and it was
intensely salty. I asked for water to dilute the broth after a little bit of boiling (and further condensing the salt).
Their
order sheet allows for two rounds, clearly laid out with categories for food. The
meats are
maximum 2 orders per round (not sure if it's per person) with
each plate being 10pcs. Also, there is a section for extra add-on items, such as meat skewers, oysters, extra condiment items, and drinks/desserts. [Note the numbers I had on the order sheet because the
items DO NOT come in the amount listed, it's quite sporadic]
There is a
sauce station with:
Satay (super
watery and just oil),
chili oil (not very spicy),
peanut sauce, and
soy sauce. To its left are the appetizer dishes you can find on the order menu but self-serve. Looked kinda sketchy, so we decided to skip those.
I've been to many hot pot AYCE establishments with a much larger selection of sauces and condiments which are included in the price at better quality-- even the Burnaby location of Little Sheep does a better job.
First to arrive was
luncheon meat (2 pieces ordered) and
garlic beef (5 slices ordered). Clearly there was far more than 2 pieces on the plate. They were average and salty. I couldn't eat more than two pieces so I left the rest on the plate. When they cleared the table I saw them bring that dish back to the kitchen while the rest of the other dishes were placed into a dirty dishes trolley... suspicious.
The
garlic beef was
fresh and
tender, however there was a
giant piece plus two small ones... almost as if they missed cutting it.
Veggies came next, we got
watercress (1 order),
enoki mushroom (1 order), and
tong ho (1 order). These looked
fresh and
clean.
Then it was an assorted dish of items we ordered:
crab meat stick (4 pieces ordered, 6 came),
cuttlefish (4 pieces ordered, 8 came),
fresh aorta (6 pieces ordered, 10+ arrived),
beef tendon (4 ordered, 4 came),
beef omasum (4 pieces ordered, a huge clump came),
beef tripe (4 pieces ordered, frozen clump came),
quail eggs (4 ordered, 4 came),
cod fillet (4 pieces ordered, 7 came),
dried pork rind (4 pieces ordered, 8 came),
mutton dumpling (4 pieces ordered, 4 came). They ended up
missing our order for mussels, but we were too full and didn't feel like asking for them. The
mutton dumplings were highlights for sure, they were
tasty and
flavorful but very filling. Everything else was
fresh. The
cod fillets were
super salty, and after cooking in the salty broth--
inedible, so we had to leave them.
Look at the beak still in my cuttlefish!
Another plate arrived with
tofu puff (4 pieces ordered, 6 came),
fresh bean curd stick (4 pieces ordered, 4 came),
winter melon slices (2 pieces ordered, 4 came),
fish tofu (2 pieces ordered, 2 came),
kelp knot (1 order),
gluten (4 pieces ordered, 6 came),
potato slices (2 pieces ordered, 4 came),
pork blood curd (4 pieces ordered, 5 came), and
pork liver (4 pieces ordered, 6 came). I
liked the
tofu puffs and
gluten, these could be cooked nice and soft with some bite to them, indicating
good quality. HungryPanda was pretty choked about having to eat 4 instead of 2 potato slices at the end since she was so full already. Elephant had to take many for the team and was definitely overfilled. The
pork liver was
nice and
fresh,
marinated well and had
good bite to them.
Oh did I mention we got our soup at this time after all that food had arrived to taunt us?
I didn't even realize the
meatballs dish was inaccurate, but they're hand-made and decent. Good bite and flavors. We ordered 6 of each but only got 4 of each. There was
cuttlefish ball,
mutton ball, and
beef ball.
Yay! Our first order of supposedly 30 pieces of
lamb shoulder slices finally arrives! Their
meats are
super thinly sliced, about 1 mm thick. So they
cook very quick and barely feel like eating anything almost!
Not fatty and
fresh, this was
good quality meat.
Next were "5 slices" of
loin of beef, clearly way more pieces-- like 20. They were
fattier but melted in my mouth and so
full of beef flavor. A nice shade of red too.
Then were our
fatty beef slices (30 pieces ordered, 20 came), these were
fresh and
yummy too! No complaints here besides it disappearing too fast!
To be safe we only ordered 5 pieces of their
kurobuta pork belly and... at least 30 slices arrived. These were
nicely marbled and not too fatty. You could see the
beautiful layers of meat and fat, super
fresh and
tasty!
Needless to say, the
portion amounts were totally random and inaccurate, so it was very hard to gauge how much to order. I mean, if it's off by 1 or 2 it's within reason, but double or more of the order? That's a bit much.
On my second round I just wanted a little bit more lamb and beef, so I ordered 1 order of each (should be 10 pieces) but at least 30 slices of lamb and over 10 slices of the beef showed up.
Two orders of watercress looked exactly like the one order. I was pretty annoyed by this time and didn't want to waste time reasoning with them.
HungryPanda and Elephant both ordered
plum juice (
$2 with free refills) and they said it was
good,
not a
diluted version.
Might give them another chance in six months when they've settled in more and get running more smoothly. The lineups because of the hype is definitely overrated and not worth the wait. Food was very fresh though!
Looking at the menu, they're on the expensive side for a Chinese dim sum/ cafe style restaurant. They offer lots of menu options, such as dim sum and set menus for 4 to 10 people. Interior is brightly lit and looked clean, with some tint to the windows so that the sun doesn't blind us from outside. Rather quiet when we were there, only about 2-3 other tables around lunch time.
We couldn't find some items on the menu we wanted in mind, but the waitress was wonderfully friendly, explained where items were, and it felt homey because of her. We got their Two Kinds of BBQ Meat ($19.95) and chose BBQ Duck and Honey BBQ Pork. This is typically one of their signature items. I'm surprised they could serve us this dish for that price. The duck was lukewarm and barely any good pieces. Otherwise the seasoning and meat met average standards. Super fatty and only a quarter duck. The BBQ Pork-- I don't even know if it was meat. It was so over-tenderized and seasoned that the texture was no longer meat. It was super salty, dry, and hard.
Another staple is congee, so we ordered an Assorted Meat Congee ($8.95) which had pork stomach, liver, kidney, and meatball. It was not very salty, which is good for our health, but nothing was marinated either. Liver, kidney, and stomach should have been marinated lightly for the congee but they were bland. The meatball didn't have any bounce to it either, so soft and mushy. The congee base was disappointing too, perhaps Hon's does a better job than them.
Our final dish was the Pork Hock with Tossed Noodle ($10.95). This was a generous portion of noodles and it comes with a side soup to go with the noodles. There's some lettuce on the side and a good couple pieces of pork hock. Pork hock was done well, flavors soaked into the pieces of soft, tender hock. Noodles were too sticky and didn't have the proper bite to them. Soup was intensely salty, which if mixed with the noodles (traditionally meant to be drank while having these noodles, not mixed), was decent and helped cut the sticky feel to the noodles.
This totally killed our mood for the day, but the sunshine and beautiful cherry blossoms helped lift it back up! For the price we paid, we could've fed six people at dim sum. Service was good, but food missed the mark. By a lot. I hope they fix themselves as the restaurant continues into full swing, since it IS pretty new (a month old now?)
