Kim Tao Hot Pot

My favourite hot pot place of all times! We have been going here for about 5 years and this place never disappoints. Not sure why some reviewers are saying poor service but perhaps they could comment and elaborate further? We have always had impeccable service here, every single time and let me tell you I can’t even count how many times I came here during my 9 months pregnancy cravings here almost every night.
I love all the condiments from this place, you can refer to my photo for the crazy mixing of sauces I love to throw into the mix; garlic, ginger, hoisin sauce, satay sauce, green onion, parsley, red onions, chilli pepper. A few must orders for me here are their cuttlefish balls, fish balls, tripes, baby squid, fried bean curd balls (my absolute favourite), nappa, Chinese lettuce, udon. I always get the satay soup base and the parsley and thousand year old egg.
The one advice when coming here is to don’t wear your fancy clothes as you will smell fishy after dining here. The price is very affordable especially comparing to other AYCE hot pots but this place is better because they offer a lot more condiments than most other places.

One of my favorite place, ordered the seafood meal, they will gove you big oysters and the meays are good too, nothing fancy but you will enjoy for sure, their broth are pretty good and tasty, for the price, this is the most affordable ayce hot pot with good service and the best part is, their washroom is clean!

This is one of the most reasonably priced hotpot in the GTA ($ 20.99 on weekdays + $ 2 additional on weekends) and that is why I consistently find myself returning here. For the price, you get a large jug of ice tea/​plum juice w/​unlimited refills and a few cooked dishes such as rice pots. What really places Kim Tao over the edge are the variety of soup bases that are included (Ex. Satay, Tomato, Preserved Egg… etc.). Overall, the food is decent quality and comes out quickly.
In terms of service, it really depends which waiter serves you (some are better than others). But a common trend I find is that they’ll forget 1 – 2 items that we request.
TIPS:
— They already applied a service charge on your bill
— Deserts aren’t on the menu, you have to request for it; They have mango sago and red bean soup
— If you want the AYCE Beef option, make sure you check it off on the paper or they’ll charge you the seafood price.
— Sit near the center of the restaurant, as it’s easier to get someone’s attention
— FREE wifi

It’s an all you can eat hot pot place. For food everything is really fresh and delicious. But for the service probably not so good. We ordered plum juice and they gave us lemon tea instead. So we were like OK. Cause everyone will make some mistakes. We also ordered fish paste with eggplant but it never came until we asked for it. Plus the veggie we ordered it never came as well until we asked the staff and he said we do not have it for today. We had to order another type of veggie which is… hmm fine. But my question is can you just tell us first before we place the order?
Well anyways, once again the food is not too bad but the service just no so organized that’s why I only give three stars.

This is my go-​to hotpot restaurant.
Unlike other newer hotpot restaurants in Markham/​RH, this restaurant still has free soup bases available, with unlimited refills of lemon tea and plum juice.
Prices are very reasonable, at $ 20.99 for adults on a weeknight for the AYCE. It’s recommended you get the seafood price as it’s only $ 2 additional charge and you get a plate of oyster, shrimps, salmon, enoki mushroom, mussels and scallop (the seafood is not unlimited). There’s also cooked food and dessert included in the price.
They did miss a few items, but overall most arrived with not too long of a wait.
Of all the places I’ve tried, I will continue to return to this one.

Though the ma-​la broth was oddly bland, the tomato broth (at no additional cost, unlike the ma-​la one) made up for the lost flavour and somehow reminiscent of honey butter chips.
The vegetables and meat seemed fresh enough, and I was willing to forgive the hard shards of beak I found in my squid ball.
What’s lowering my score to a 2 is the fact that when removing plates with any uneaten pieces (ie the large bowl of green veggies), the staff doesn’t stack the plates on top of each other, but carefully lines them up as to not crush each other. I highly suspect that they’re actually putting them back in a larger pile and simply re-​serving to the next customer. How do you know I didn’t drop anything on the floor or do weird crap with it before putting it back on a plate? Ew, dudes.
I’d recommend to the management that they’re better off just serving a slightly smaller portion of greens, then allowing people to order again to avoid wastage.
As for my fellow Unilocalers, I’d recommend to go elsewhere!

My friends and I were planning to go to the newly opened Chongqing Liuyishou (where 100 deg used to be). Since they had an event, my friends decided to come here. My last experience was terrible. This time was actually pretty good.
The highlights were the baby octupus and the honey comb tripe. Not many places have those. The handmade beef balls were decent too. Beef slices were a bit too fat, but the lamb slices were good.
Services were alright, but nothing spectacular. Food came rather quick. When ordering, they sort of just gave portions that reflected your party size rather than whatever number you put down.
All you can drink ice tea weren’t that great. Tastes like self mixed and a bit off.
Dessert was mango sago. Pretty good.
The beef ayce (not seafood) weekend dinner came to about 29 dollars a person.
⁷⁄₁₀ for quality of food, ⁶⁄₁₀ for service, ⁶⁄₁₀ for value, ⁷⁄₁₀ overall (not an average).

generally i don’t like to pay to cook my own food. hot pot is an exception.
for drinks, u get a pitcher of iced tea and a pitcher of prune juice. i can NOT do the prune juice. that stuff makes my lips purse and face shrivel up like a raisin. iced tea please!
anyways, it’s more or less what you expect from a hot pot place. you can ask for raw egg to add to your sauce. they have this weird thing u squeeze out of a plastic bag that turns into some sort of weird noodle, i dont know what’s so special about it other than it’s interesting to watch it cook. u can also get the home made meat balls which come on this weird silver paddle type thing and u kinda separate the meat concoction yourself into the hot pot where it cooks. honestly, i’d avoid that just because it’s like this premade meat concoction that might’ve been sitting there a while and sometimes it has a weird smell/​sour taste to it, like it has expired. my friends order it, i avoid it, it’ll stick with lamb slices and udon noodles.

I’m not typically a fan of shared-​pot hotpot places as items can get lost, and food preparation can get a little shady with many people poking around the pot. I have to say that one of my best hotpot experiences was at Kim Tao. The place was not too busy on a weekday evening and with a little pot management, the experience was very pleasant. They have a large variety of items that can be ordered off a menu, which was a nice experience too. The service was quick and friendly.
My friends and I sat there for hours on end just chattering away long after we were full from the hotpot and the waiters respected that. They were not intrusive and were happy to come back to take our dessert orders. Their desserts of mango and red bean puddings were delicious, and of course they had ice cream too.

OH MAN. I have never been this full in my life. Got both the ice tea and prune juice. Ordered every meat possible (no seafood!) and was beyond stuffed. Hot pot rice was decent. Service was adequate. Dont come here expecting 5 star service or even 3 star service. LOL. Its all about that broth and raw goodies. The meat quality is above average and the broth is solid. I recommend this old historic hot pot. Been going here for years. 4 stars ****

Solid 3 stars. Service could have been a lot better. Food was decent.
Came here for a friends gathering 10 people. Reservations for us a private room at the side. Accommodates 10 –14 nicely. We had to wait around 5 minutes to get seated. The waiting area was packed and very little to no room.
There are no greeters to introduce you to the menu. Drinks came without asking there was an iced tea and a prune juice type drink. We did not check off the seafood platter but they have brought it to us anyway. I think it is $ 2 extra per person. The seafood was my fav tho. It came with oysters shrimp and some calamari. Dumplings was great too! They have a selection of meats as well as veggies. Originally they said they ran out of the squeeze tofu but later in the night they gave us 2 orders (not sure where they got it from). The servers who served us were not too friendly. When we asked for items they said «If I remember «lol
We also asked to split the bill but ur server talked for around 2 min then said he will give us the bill and you can split it yourself. He could of just said no and that was the end of it lol.
The total came out to around $ 31 per person, expected for hot pot ayce on a weekend.

When we are talking about hotpot, you don’t need a fancy soup based, you don’t need a thousand of dipping sauce to choose from, the most important is keep everything fresh.
This restaurant open for more than ten years (as I remember, even thought I am not sure still under the same boss or not). Haven’t come back for years due to not living near by, it brought back alot of good memory from the old days. Food is fresh, which the most important for hotpot. Will make time to come more often.

Decided to come here with my girlfriend and the start of the night was great. We got there and was immediately sat down. We got water and juice and drink and they just brought one jug of each. The menu was pretty long and it seemed like it would be a good dinner. We also noticed they had free Wi-​Fi and after making our order, the food came right away with the hotpot.
First, make sure you check the type of meal you want to have at the top of your order sheet. We didn’t check off either so we were brought a seafood platter… neither of us eat seafood so we sent it back. The waiter said next time to check off either beef or seafood on the card, so he took it back and never did give us the beef platter.
The hotpot soup bases were not nearly what we expected of them. My girlfriend ordered a mix of two flavours (I don’t remember what the type was off the top of my head, I’ll edit this review when I ask her) and one of the flavours were apparently overpowering the other by a fair bit. Mine was a chicken base, but it had zero chicken flavour to it and pretty much tasted like I was eating from plain water — which makes sense because the soup looked to have barely any colour at all. This pretty much caused the rest of the food we have very little flavour. The meats in particular weren’t that great but I don’t really know if that’s because of our soup base or because of the meat itself.
The service alright. They were very quick to bring us what we ordered after we sent the card, which is good. My two complaints stem from the above (in the second paragraph) and that they never checked up on us — not once. So each and every time, we had to flag someone down… which was hard because I think I saw two employees the entire night and they were usually in the back or behind the counter — which wasn’t in our view from our table.
The price in itself for hotpot wasn’t awful but they tack on an extra 10% for service, which I find to be rare these days.
I left this place full, but not in a way that I actually enjoyed it. I will not be returning.

So, i saw this place on my friends snapchat, & im always more than down to try new and cool looking places
& also first time trying hot pot
LOVED IT.
Satisfied.
The waitor looked confused and attitudey at the beginning, cause i dont think he understood me when i said its our first time,
But then he realized and he started helping us with everything, and actually made a special sauce for us to try, which was so good
He was so nice
Not a lovely smell when you first walk in but
Overall a good experience
Came out to $ 28 AYCE dinner

I love hot pot, and I love AYCE style. I was bound to like this place at least a little bit. I came here for an early dinner with my family for one of our last meals in Toronto. The food was pretty good, and there was a pretty decent selection of food and sauces available. I enjoyed the thinly sliced beef and lamb, but I felt like the meat quality was very average. I enjoyed most of the fish balls and meat balls as well, but I did feel like the beef ball was a little unusual. Some of the insides of the beef balls remained slightly red no matter how long I cooked it, and I couldn’t figure out why that was happening. I ate it anyway and didn’t die, so I guess that turned out okay. The dumplings were great, but they took a very long time to cook because they were given to us frozen. The oysters that were provided on the half shell were MASSIVE. They tasted alright, but I’ll admit that I’m not the biggest fan of cooked oysters in general. I didn’t like their fish paste at all because there was way too much cilantro in it. The cilantro in it was completely overpowering to me, but I know some people actually like cilantro in their fish paste. matter of preference I suppose. The beef tripe was TERRIBLE and by far the worst item we received. I usually love the texture of beef tripe when it’s soaked in soup (soft and slippery exterior with a slightly chewy interior), but the beef tripe here actually hardened a little bit in the soup. It was absurdly chewy and basically inedible. Something was definitely wrong with that beef tripe. We were also given a mango tapioca dessert on the house at the end of the meal. It was delicious and refreshing, and I felt that it was an excellent way to end our dinner. All of the other items we received during our meal were essentially what I expected, so I don’t have much to write about for those items.
The service here was straightforward and reasonably fast, but the waiter did miss a few of our items more than once. When we informed him of the mistakes, he was able to fix it rather quickly. I imagine the service wouldn’t have been this fast if we arrived during the busier dinner hours. The price for the AYCE hot pot dinner was very worth it, and I’m jealous that there aren’t AYCE hot pot restaurants in my area like this place. Unfortunately for me, most of the hot pot restaurants near me are a la carte style, so the prices add up really fast for someone with a large appetite. I would be willing to come here again, but I would probably research the other AYCE hot pot restaurants in the area before returning. 3.5÷5

The one thing I like about this place is that there’s a lot of options to make your dipping sauce just right.
This restaurant isn’t memorable though.

Kim Tao is an AYCE Hot pot restaurant in Richmond Hill. The place itself is HUGE. They’ve got so many damn tables, I would find it hard to believe if they ever were too busy to get you a table. Though not the cleanest place in the world, there aren’t many hot pot restaurants that are.
The menu for dinner offers quite a bit of selection. As with many places, pricing will vary depending on if you want the seafood selection or not. The seafood selection offers a variety of items, but I honestly only come for meats anyways. They have a wide range of meats like beef, lamb, pork, and chicken (sounds standard), but they also have an impressive list of meat balls as well.
The broth list here is also pretty good as they have options including regular broth and their special spicy broth, which is a bit more intense than other hot pot places I’ve been to. The spicy broth is killer with the red meats and such, but otherwise, everything else like veggies and such should be cooked in the light broth.
They have some other items like sticky rice and desserts, but if you have room for those, you’re not doing a good job at the hot pot. The place is OK and service is a bit lackluster, but I guess they have a lot of floor to cover. The prices are a bit higher than I thought it would be, but still not bad.

Came here yesterday 10pm after a movie,
There’s nothing much to say except the fact the place looks like a mess. There are used chopsticks laying underneath the table, crumpled napkins and the cups are foggy looking and sticky.
The service was OK.
The food was nothing special, we ordered the seafood platter that came with oysters, scallops, shrimps, mussels, enoki mushroom and 2 thin slices of salmon that dissapeared in the broth.
The good thing is they have unlimited free ice tea or plum juice.
The price of it came to $ 52 for 2. Which was kind of worth it? They also add service charge to it so don’t need to give extra tips !
*note: some things may not be fresh, because we ended up having a stomach ache afterwards*

The restaurant is gigantic, with lots of large private rooms, large booths, and tables. Perfect for large group dining. The all-​you-​can-​eat beef option is $ 18.99, with seafood option is $ 20.99, with discounted price of $ 16.99 after 10PM. There is an array of soup flavors, with only small fees for the specialty soups. There are a lot of sauces that you can order, given that the table comes with satay sauce, garlic, green onion, soy sauce, the basics etc. There is an endless selection of food options, all of which were fresh. One of the best thing about this restaurant is that they bring you pitchers of lemon tea and/​or plum juice. It’s not the best, but it’s bottomless, and FREE, so I’m sure no one is complaining.
This is definitely a go-​to place for all of you hot pot lovers! It will definitely satisfy your cravings!

I’m not a huge hot pot fan so I rarely go out for it. However, my friend’s mom graciously treated a few of us to dinner and we decided on this restaurant.
We came here on a Saturday night and it was quite hard to find parking. I would also recommend making reservations because it can get quite busy. There was the seven of us so we got a large table. There were 3 pots in total and each pot had a divider so each pot can hold two different soup base. I chose the satay soup base and I can just handle the spice level.
There’s quite a lot to choose from to cook. One of the more interesting item on the menu was the pig’s fallopian tube… I have to say, I quite enjoyed it! My friend, Alex Y., ordered a seasonal vegetable (not sure of the Chinese or English name) and it had a very unique taste to it (just another example of their large selection).
The reason why I’m giving this restaurant four star instead of five is because they never give us exactly what we ordered. Also, I’m slightly disappointed that they don’t have dessert. After this experience, I think I’m starting to enjoy hot pot!