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Bernice Chan

In Vancouver, young people wait patiently for a table at one of the Canadian city’s most popular hotpot spots.
Big Way Hot Pot, however, is no traditional hotpot restaurant chain – instead of everyone eating from one shared pot, each customer gets their own to fill.
They can add ingredients from beef and shrimp to frog legs, crayfish to fish balls and smoked duck. Once they have added what they want, the pot is weighed and priced before being taken to the kitchen, where the preferred soup base is added. Then it is delivered to the customer at the table.
Big Way Hot Pot restaurants cater to a wide range of budgets, and some are open as late as 4am at weekends – perfect for those with food cravings after a night out.
People like me like customisation
Big Way Hot Pot co-founder Christiana Luo explains its concept
On social media some diners make a game out of guessing how much they will have to pay for their meal before weighing their pot, and try to spend less than C$10 (US$7.20) by avoiding heavy ingredients such as tofu, crab and corn.
They also like trying the soup bases, which include mala tang, tomato broth, tom yum and collagen bone broth, and the chain’s drinks – among them cheese foam peach oolong tea, avocado smoothie, passion fruit lemonade and milk tea with boba.

Founded in the city three years ago, the chain is the brainchild of couple Jack Yao and Christiana Luo, who have quickly scaled up to seven locations and plan to open four more later this year. Big Way Hot Pot will also launch in the United States in December, with the first of two planned restaurants in Los Angeles in California.
The couple, who had been in the planning stages of setting up Big Way Hot Pot when the coronavirus pandemic hit, were inspired to change its concept as restaurants that used communal pots were stigmatised for allegedly helping spread Covid-19.
Because of this, they decided each customer should have their own pot – and their own ingredients.
“The younger generation prefer the idea of choosing their own [food] and having other people cook it for them, so there has to be choice, rather than no choice,” Luo says.
When she goes to Starbucks, for example, she wants the option of getting a drink with particular specifications, she adds. “People like me like customisation.”

Luo, who is in her forties, is chief marketing officer of Big Way Hot Pot. She and Yao – her husband and business partner – are from Jiaxing in Zhejiang province, eastern China. They were high-school sweethearts who got married in 2009, and now have two daughters.
The duo studied business at university and had dreams of becoming entrepreneurs. Luo’s parents wanted her to join the family business, which spans real estate, construction, manufacturing and education.
“I really wanted to be a businesswoman, I didn’t want to follow them,” she says, also she did spend over two years working in marketing for the family’s cement business.
Soon after they married, the couple went to Melbourne, Australia, where they obtained postgraduate degrees, had their first child, and opened a franchise of the Australian coffeehouse brand Gloria Jean’s Coffees. Luo says people think running a coffee shop is easy, but there is a lot of work involved as you are both the boss and one of the staff.

In 2017, the young family moved to Vancouver, where Luo’s parents and younger brother live and where, two years later, the couple’s second daughter was born.
“Because I had my first child [in Melbourne], nobody could help me. And North America has a bigger market and more opportunities. So my parents offered me something that I could not say no [to],” she says.
Yao worked for two hotpot restaurants, The Dolar Shop Hot Pot and Boiling Point, while Luo did marketing for a steakhouse restaurant. When Covid-19 began spreading around the world, the couple took the opportunity to work on their idea of opening their own hotpot chain.
“During the pandemic, everything was possible. We spent more than a year testing, doing market research, trying the food and the prototype,” Luo says. They launched Big Way Hot Pot in 2021.
Each location employs up to 60 staff working different shifts. In the kitchen, one person cooks six pots at any given time, while nine others clean and chop ingredients, restock, and clean tables.

After customers are done with their main course, free soft-serve ice cream – Yao’s idea – is served, with flavours including milk tea, matcha, chocolate and black sesame.
“We position ourselves as casual dining, not fast food, and with casual dining, you have dessert after a meal. It’s full service because we cook it for you, bring it to your table, you finish it, and then there’s a dessert,” Luo says.
This past year, the couple have been flying to Los Angeles to do market research in the two neighbourhoods where Big Way Hot Pot is opening and working with a local partner.
Luo says her parents are proud of her business venture.
“At the beginning, they didn’t think this was going to be a good business, because mala tang in Chinese culture is just street food, it’s not what middle-class people eat every day. But I wanted to try it and do something different. I wanted to prove that I could do it,” she says.
“People always ask me which city I prefer, Melbourne or Vancouver. I like the lifestyle of Melbourne – laid back and chill, friendly – but Vancouver has more opportunities.
“So you have to choose, right? I tell my kids that life is always better with choices rather than no choice.”


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Food and Drinks

How Big Way Hot Pot turns hotpot idea upside down, and its rapid growth in North America

Big Way Hot Pot’s format allows diners to customise individual pots which are weighed for pricing, and cooked to order. Launched three years ago in Vancouver, Canada, where it continues to expand, the chain is about to start making inroads in the United States. Photo: Big Way Hot Pot

Diners at Big Way Hot Pot can choose their own hotpot ingredients from a selection of more than 100 items. Photo: Big Way Hot Pot

“Your Pot Your Way” is the motto of Canadian hotpot chain Big Way Hot Pot. Photo: Big Way Hot Pot

A typical pot at Big Way Hot Pot with a mala (hot and numbing) soup base. Photo: Big Way Hot Pot

Big Way Hot Pot staff celebrate the restaurant’s third anniversary with founders Jack Yao (back, left) and Christiana Luo (front, third from left). Photo: Big Way Hot Pot

What is XO sauce? The popular Chinese condiment explained

XO sauce is typically made with expensive ingredients such as dried scallops, shrimp roe, dried shrimps and Jinhua ham. Photo: Catty & Tael

 A jar of XO sauce from Hong Kong restaurant Ming Court. Photo: Ming Court

Charles Cheung is the owner and chef of private kitchen Catty and Tael. Photo: Catty and Tael

Ho Wai-shing is executive chef of The Royal Garden Chinese Restaurant in Tsim Sha Tsui. Photo: The Royal Garden Chinese Restaurant

Li Yuet-faat is executive chef of Chinese cuisine at Ming Court in Mong Kok. Photo: Ming Court

Vancouver’s Hello Kitty Cafe an instant hit with fans of the cute cat, to owner’s surprise

Hello Kitty poses at the food and drinks counter in the Hello Kitty Cafe Vancouver. Its owner, Ken Lam Cheuk-hang, talks about the cafe’s unexpected success, and bringing joy to fans from Canada and beyond. Photo: Hello Kitty Cafe Vancouver

Hello Kitty fans at the Hello Kitty Cafe Vancouver after purchasing merchandise. Photo: Hello Kitty Cafe Vancouver

Hello Kitty waves to fans in the queue at the opening of the cafe. Photo: Hello Kitty Cafe Vancouver

Vancouver politicians and Sanrio executives joined Ken Lam and Hello Kitty at the ribbon cutting. Photo: Hello Kitty Cafe Vancouver.

Niki Chung (left) and Kitty Jones at the Hello Kitty Cafe. The pair queued up overnight to ensure they were the first in line on the opening day. Photo: Niki Chung

Fans outside the Hello Kitty Cafe Vancouver. Lam says that the design, food and merchandise at the cafe are all a collaboration with Sanrio. Photo: Niki Chung

Hello Kitty fan Marisa Sopel at the Hello Kitty Cafe, which she lives only blocks away from. Photo: Marisa Sopel

The Korean Chinatown that set the path of Chinese food in Korea

A bowl of jjajangmyeon.

The Jjajangmyeon Museum, in Incheon’s Jung district, is fronted by old signboards from Gonghwachun, a restaurant in the city’s Chinatown that flourished in the early 20th century thanks to dishes like jjajangmyeon, a localised Chinese noodle dish based on zhajiangmian. Photo: Park Chan-kyong

A Chinese chef (front) poses with assistants in this 1994 photo taken by Kim Bo-sub in Incheon’s Chinatown. Photo: Noonbit Publishing

A Chinese woman’s foot is deformed due to a lifetime of binding. Photo: Noonbit Publishing

An undated photo of an old Chinese lady with her granddaughter in Incheon’s Chinatown. Photo: Noonbit Publishing

A Chinese couple captured by Kim Bo-sub. Photo: Noonbit Publishing

A bowl of jjajangmyeon. Photo: Instagram/wranglerme

Dusty chairs sit inside the abandoned Gonghwachun. Photo: Noonbit Publishing

Hong Kong noodle history and the different noodle styles explained

Shrimp roe thick noodle lo mien from Kwan Kee Bamboo Noodle in Hong Kong. Photo: Llewellyn Cheung

Roast goose with lai fun rice noodles from Yung Kee in Hong Kong. Learn about the different kinds of noodles served in the city, how they are traditionally made, and the foods they are typically paired with. Photo: Llewellyn Cheung

Wheat noodles originate in Northern China, while rice noodles have Southern Chinese origins, says Dr Siu Yan-ho, a lecturer in Chinese language and literature at Baptist University. 

Marco Li Ka-chi of Kwan Kee Bamboo Noodle balancing on a bamboo pole to make noodles. Photo: Llewellyn Cheung

Shrimp roe thick noodle lo mien at Kwan Kee Bamboo Noodle. Photo: Llewellyn Cheung

 Cheung Wing Kee started making noodles in the 1950s, producing small quantities using labour-intensive methods.

Roast goose with lai fun rice noodles. The thicker, neutral-tasting noodles are perfect for absorbing the flavours from the roast goose and broth. Photo: Llewellyn Cheung

Lifestyle

Food & Drink

Vancouver hotpot chain where, inspired by the pandemic, you don’t share but order your own bowl, grew rapidly. Now it’s about to hit the US


Vancouver hotpot chain where, inspired by the pandemic, you don’t share but order your own bowl, grew rapidly. Now it’s about to hit the US.


Canada

Asian diaspora

Chinese cuisine