My mom and I decided to go for Christmas dinner at Xiang Zi Hot Pot after last year's rousing success. We invited her bestie and got a 5:30PM reservation. It seems like they decided to do two seating times this Christmas instead of having reservations at any time like they usually do, because when we got there, it was a full house.
Tofu puffs, fish balls, quail eggs, beef tendon balls, luncheon meat, lotus root, daikon, and winter melon
Chrysanthemum greens and tender beef slices
Bean curd rolls, lettuce, napa cabbage, king oyster mushrooms, and spring rolls
White fish, squid, beef tripe, and tender beef slices
Premium abalone
Fresh-cut beef slices
Mushroom and pork bone soup
So, last year, we were blown away by the assortment and set up they had at Christmas. They had a huge buffet-style spread of various prepared dishes and snacks as well as extra raw items to pick up ON TOP of their full tablet menu. But they decided to do things a little different this year. They cut down about half the menu and put almost everything out buffet-style. A bunch of our favourite things — various slices of meat, prepared cold dishes like lettuce stem salad or spicy cucumber salad — weren't available. A lot of the ready-to-eat foods weren't being refilled fast enough. There were only about 10 items we could order from the tablet to the table. Disappointing, since the sheer variety of food is what we love about coming here over other hot pot places.
An issue this evening, though, is that we were seated upstairs. I don't really mind myself (hey, extra steps means I can eat more, right?), but my mom and her best friend are in their 70s and have bad knees and arthritis. And the buffet? Where all the food is? It's downstairs. There's no elevator. So I ended up walking up and down the stairs about 8 times to get enough food for everyone. And that's fine because that's as much exercise as I'm getting this holiday week. No biggie. The real problem? They FORGOT OUR HOT POTS. You know, the actual pots with the broth that we can cook all of our raw food in? Yeah. All three of us ordered the same type of broth — mushroom and pork bone. Not a particularly complicated order. They usually get our pots to us within minutes. But tonight, it took them 45 MINUTES for them to bring our broth pots to our table. This was after asking three different servers to check on them for us. And, mind you, every table gets a 2-hour seating limit here. The server sheepishly had to assure us that they wouldn't have a time limit for us tonight — frankly, the least they could do. If we weren't hungry when we arrived, we were starving by the time we could actually eat our food.
So, yeah. Xiang Zi's Christmas dinner service this year was a disappointing, disorganized mess. Judging by how long they took to get our hot pots to us, how many empty chafing dishes there were at the buffet, how long it took them to refill all the different ingredients, and just the lack of variety that they usually have, I'd say they were way too understaffed for the sheer amount of customers there tonight and had to cut way back on food costs. I've never had a less-than-excellent time at Xiang Zi, so this dinner was particularly disappointing. (I also just discovered that they don't even have an official website anymore. Are they going out of business?)
On that note, I hope everyone had a merry Christmas and a better dinner experience than we did!
Xiang Zi Hot Pot
Uptown Market Shopping Centre
3989 Highway 7
Markham, ON L3R 5M6
(905) 305-9888
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