GLGW Chinese Restaurant

Sometimes it is a blessing to be put into a situation where we must blindly walk into an unknown restaurant.  With reviews and social media at our disposal at anytime on our smartphones, it has taken out the guessing game when it comes to eating out.  However, how many times do we just take a chance on a random restaurant?  This happened recently when we tried to head to Chuan BBQ in Richmond.  When we arrived, it appeared that they left for vacation and wouldn't be back for a month.  Being hangry, we merely went next door to GLGW for some dry hot pot.

For those unfamiliar, think of ingredients you might cook in a boiling hot pot, but instead of a broth, there is only sauce.  It is actually prepared in the kitchen without any diner participation.  So really, it can be seen as a large bowl of cooked food.  Now the picture doesn't do it justice as this bowl of food could easily feed 4 people.  We ended up getting the Prawn Hot Pot with additions including scallops, lamb, ribs, lotus root, gluten, bean curd skin, cauliflower, tripe, rice cake, oyster mushrooms and pig trotters in a spicy Szechuan-style sauce (minus the numbing spice).  Although we had a mix of different ingredients, they were able to cook most things well independent of each other.  For instance, the shrimp and scallops were not overdone (albeit the batter on the scallops was too goopy) and the rice cake was still chewy.  Rice was needed to eat this as it would get too flavourful and salty without it.

So if you are wondering if there was any filler underneath the top layer of the hot pot, there wasn't.  Rather, as you can clearly see, it was all the good stuff that we ordered.   In fact, since there was so much of it, everything stayed steaming hot underneath.  Yes, that meant the seafood continued to cook, so the best course of action was to remove that ASAP.  Loved that they didn't skimp with the more expensive ingredients as the ratio was pretty even with everything in the bowl.  To squeeze in one different dish, we had the Mouth-Watering Chicken.  Although this looked pretty plain, the tender chicken was inherently flavourful.  There could've been more spice, but this was a decent version.  Loved the gelatinized skin (with some gelatin underneath).  So you might be wondering how much did our hot pot cost?  Well, it wasn't cheap at $80.00, but considering how much food there was and the level of execution, I'd come back for more.

The Good:
- Proteins done right
- Spicy, but not killer spicy (depends on your personal tastes)
- They don't skimp with the more expensive ingredients

The Bad:
- Even though I thought the pricing was fair, it can add up if you don't watch it
- Contradicting what I said earlier, it may not be spicy enough for some