Little Sheep Hot Pot – Chinese dining experience in Canada

Little Sheep Hot Pot is a traditional Inner Mongolian hot pot cuisine restaurant that features metal pots filled with herbs and spices to be boiled in a cooking tabletop. The first Little Sheep Hot Pot opened in August 1999 in the Mongolian province of China and as the restaurant chain states, its mission is to “introduce Mongolian culture and food in North America”. It has over 30 locations spread throughout North America, 9 of them in Canada.

The Hot Pot history can be traced back to more than 1,000 years, and the restaurant proudly shares it: “Mongol horsemen would fill their overturned helmets with water, place them in embers to simmer and add meat and vegetables. As the Mongols traveled throughout China, they began to create their own unique dishes by adding local ingredients.” 

Each hot pot is a visual delight, by being filled with a steaming aromatic broth that includes an assortment of fresh ingredients such as goji berries, jujubes, black cardamon pods, ginseng, and herbs. A spicy broth is also available and can be ordered with “mala” chili oil and peppercorns. In the Mississauga location, from the vast selection of sliced marbled meats, crisp vegetables, fresh seafood and handmade noodles, the most popular items to be put into the broth are lamb meat and lamb dumplings. However, being an all you can eat type of restaurant, everything is considered popular because it has something for every taste.

The restaurant brings a new concept of all you can eat restaurant to those who are not Chinese. The food is very traditional and the environment as well, by playing only Chinese songs and offering a different way of eating and cooking your food, since unlike other places, the customer is the one to cook it. The broths are already seasoned, but it is possible to add other types of seasoning to personalize the meal even more.

The Dining Experience

We wanted to try everything we could so, at first, we ordered some typical Chinese appetizers. The two we tried were the backbones of pork and the lamb leg. Both were extremely well seasoned and the lamb was even too spicy for our taste, but both types of meat were very lean and well cooked.

The star of the night, the hot pot, was an interesting experience. We ordered lamb, beef, garlic beef, black mushroom, wood ear mushroom (that is a typical Chinese mushroom that has an intriguing texture), wide potato noodles, spinach noodles, Chinese dumplings (lamb dumplings), squid, crabstick, and house lamb meatball to be cooked in our broths. For the sake of the experience, we ordered both broths: the clear and the hot pot, as they call.

Wood Ear Mushroom

The food was tasty, but the experience of cooking your own food on the table is delightful. It is fun to cook using the broth, since you decide what goes in and how long it stays, although sometimes you can forget you left it in there in the first place, leaving room to a few surprises along the way. The recommended cooking times are 10-15 seconds for thinly sliced meat (cook until color changes), 1-2 minutes for green vegetables, and 3-5 minutes for noodles, dumplings, tofu, mushrooms, starchy vegetables, seafood, chicken thigh, meatballs & other proteins. The meats were cut perfectly thin which made them seem super slim! Since the food was so light, we ate more than we should have.

Included in the all you can eat menu are green tea and red beans ice cream, which are both from the brand Shirakiku, a well-known brand of Asian foods. Besides that, we tried Mongolian pumpkin pie, that is a typical Chinese desert. It is filled with red bean paste and it is not a sweet type of dessert. It is worth trying!

Little Sheep Hot Pot was a spectacular dining experience for us and we surely recommend to everyone that is willing to try something different and is fond of strong tasting meals. The restaurant target market are families, couples, and friends that are looking for a pleasant and fun meal. It is definitely the place you would take your grandparents, as well as, your girlfriend or boyfriend. Also, the restaurant atmosphere is very inviting, even though it is so different from the common North American restaurants we are used to. Besides, all you can eat menu is affordable and you can really eat as much as you want! A visit to Little Sheep Hot Pot is an experience worth trying!

Now it is your turn, we want to know your opinion!
Let us know if you find it as amazing as we did and comment it below!
Bon Appetit!

Little Sheep Hot Pot - Mississauga, ON

1100 Burnhamthorpe Road West                            Mon-Thur: 11:30am - 11:00pm

Mississauga, ON L5C 4E9                                        Fri-Sun: 11:30am - 11:30pm

Canada

905.232.7775

All You Can Eat Every Day

Lunch: $15.99 per Adult (before 3:00pm) 

Dinner: $21.99 per Adult. 

(soup base not included)