Mongolian invasion

>> Chinese hotpot chain Little Sheep takes its first steps into the North American market

by MARK SLUTSKY

When you think of fast food chains expanding globally, American restaurants tend to come to mind, like McDonalds and KFC, which have both opened profitable branches in Asia and elsewhere. But things might be changing in the opposite direction. Little Sheep is a hugely successful Chinese company with over 700 restaurants in China and its environs (and its own vertically integrated slaughterhouses and meat-packers) that’s starting to take tentative steps in the North American market. Judging from the popularity of the recently opened Montreal franchise, they might be onto a good thing.

Calling for a reservation recently, I was informed that they don’t actually take them, and that if I wanted to get a table on a Saturday night, I’d better show up early. So we went by at around 6:30 and were told by the friendly, apologetic hostess that the wait would be somewhere in the neighbourhood of one and a half hours. That’s what I call a wait! That only intensified our curiosity, so we went next door to the always-charming bubble tea house Magic Idea for a beer and an appetizer (green onion omelette, incidentally, which was very tasty), and we got a call on my celly when our table was ready.

Little Sheep specializes in Mongolian hotpot, and when I say “specializes,” I mean it’s pretty much the only thing on the menu. Which is not to say there isn’t a lot to choose from. For those unfamiliar with hot-pottery, your table is basically presented with a steaming, bubbling cauldron of herbal broth, to which you add your choice of raw ingredients. By the time we’d waited for our table, sat down, waited for the broth to heat up and waited for ingredients to cook through, I was nearly hallucinating from hunger.

Pricing is relatively simple: Monday through Friday, the lunchtime “value meal” costs $10.99 and doesn’t include seafood. At night, it’s $15.99 for the all-included buffet, with an extra dollar added on the weekend nights, and a surcharge for the spicy broth.

As to the broths, there are two kinds: “medicinal” and spicy. The latter is definitely piquant, though I can’t speak to the medicinal qualities of the former. If you want both, you can order a yin-yang shaped pot with two separated broth chambers, a combo referred to in the menu cryptically and charmingly as being “for affectionate lovers.”

Little Sheep offers somewhere in the neighbourhood of 50 different foodstuffs to cook in the broth. The meat itself is brought to your table, and consists of beef and lamb, sliced thinly as to cook quickly, and kind of resembling prosciutto.

For everything else, you hit the buffet. And when I say everything, I mean it. Here’s some of the stuff you can cook at your table: crab, mussels, pumpkin, potato, bok choy, broccoli, bamboo, pork, eggplant, baby corn, shrimp, udon noodles... it’s basically like a small supermarket. In our hunger, we made the mistake of pretty much loading everything into the hot pot at the same time, a tactic that backfired and slowed down the cooking time considerably.

Then another level of patience was required as the food comes out of the pot very hot. Seriously, at this point, just trying to get something in my mouth felt like the trials of Hercules. But when all was said and done, we enjoyed the meal. The broth is really something else—even the non-spicy version packs a kick, with its dozens of garlic cloves, Szechuan peppercorns and assorted, heady seeds and spices.

The meat came out quite tasty and tender, and I quite dug the pumpkin, which was a sweet treat. Other stuff, like the shrimp, was a little more difficult to get at with just chopsticks, and naturally the eggplant took its sweet time. Obviously, a certain level of planning is required here, and you’ve got to be comfortable with a little culinary chaos; part of the fun, I guess, is the fact that you’re not going to ever have the same meal twice. Is it worth waiting several hours for? Not particularly, but if you can get in on a calmer night, it’s worth seeing what all the fuss is about.