Pot Empire — Restaurant in Burnaby

2025 July 25 Updated review They currently have a new Lunch Menu which includes all the specialty soup base.

We tried the Laksa and Thai Tom Yum Soup base, I personally like my Laksa but the Thai was more sour than hot. You can order the spicy level of the soup.

There is so much flavour in the soup, you don’t even need to get sauces from the sauce station. I find the various sauces work best with the Basic Soup.

Our server is so good and efficient, never once did I need to call him over to add soup, he refilled our milk tea also.

Review updated for visits in 2024..

Pot Empire 4877 Kingsway, Burnaby, BC V5H 4T2

#hotpot #burnaby #individual

My usual lunch spot is Pot Empire, I introduced so many friends there. These are friends that are not use to Asian hotpot sharing culture, so it’s a good idea to have their own.

Everyone gets individual pots and the base soup already have tons of veggie and food, then whatever set you pick will include another big bowl of veggie. Meat price 5oz is about $21-28 depends on what you pick, comes with bottomless Cold milk tea, green tea yogurt drink or green tea and they give you ice cream at the end. They also offer 8 oz selection also, or extra add ons if you are a big meat eater.

We have been there from 11:30 to after 3pm catching up and the staff is happy to refill your drinks and let you sit and visit.

I like them because even though it might be slow at lunch time, all staff is always cleaning. Windows, trays, tables, floors, etc.

If you go at dinner, same price as lunch, you can collect stamps for free meal. Dinner is really busy though and makes reservations even for 2 people.

Review 2023 They currently have a Soft Opening. The menu is the same for lunch and dinner.

The sets are a lot of food for lunch. There is a minimum $18 spend per person. In case of busy times, there is a seating limit.

We tried to have lunch here but it’s the same menu as dinner and huge. The server did try to say we can share a set and she will waived for minimum $18/person spend but the pot is small and not very convenient to share for 2 friends.

Place is decorated with lots of cute neon.

We suggested the server to ask the owners to have simpler smaller sets for lunch, it’s quite overwhelming trying to figure out what is included and what is not.

Price for the meats to seafood, and combo for the various sets are around $18-25 plus additional costs for soup price if you don’t want the plain free soup base. There was a la carte add on but can’t build a smaller set in their menu.

For now, go there if you are hungry but if you want a light lunch,...

The ordering is very similar to Gokudo Shabu Shabu where each set comes with your choice of soup, meat, noodles, veg bowl, and drink. The set in this pic is the Fatty Short Plate with the sukiyaki soup (+$7 which made the entire set $31). I opted for the free soup (Pork Bone Chicken Soup - third pic). Interesting take but the veg bowl that comes with the sukiyaki soup choice is almost double the size of the veg bowl in for the pork bone chicken soup. The pork bone soup was also quite bland, though it was a pleasant surprise having so many additives in the soup (such as lotus root, pork balls, fish balls etc). Overall, quite trendy with the neon lights, pop music, and presentation, but I will likely hold off on visiting again.

This is for the reason that I arrived at 3PM on a weekend and was declined service (even though it was during opening hours and there were several open tables). We weren't given a reason, just that we couldn't be seated. So we asked when the next available seating was and was told it was at 5PM. When we tried to leave our name for the 5PM seating, we were told we couldn't. Coming back the second time around (on 1PM on a different day), we were seated (when it was even busier than the first time around). Service was very slow and inattentive. The menu, at first glance, seems complex, however, luckily having been to Gokudo shabu shabu, I understood the how ordering worked. An explanation would have been nice, or at least an offer of how to order (like they do at Gokudo). We were seated for about 25min before our soup came, and waited another 15min or so before our raw ingredients came (this was after we asked where our food was since we had already received our soup). My burner ran out of butane a couple minutes in and it took a while to try to wave down a server-I eventually got up to go to the back to ask for a new butane tank. Food wise-the pork bone soup was very bland and the veggies were not all that fresh. Even the garlic at the sauce bar did not look fresh. Overall, there are several other hotpot spots in this area. I will likely not return...

The food is okay but not better than other nearby hot pot restaurants. I've seen people say that Pot Empire is the cheaper and better value version of Gokudo but I disagree. The value isn't better- the price is lower but their meat and veggie portions are smaller to reflect that, and more than half of the veggies was cabbage. Gokudo also has more variety in their ingredients. My yakult green tea also tasted weirdly diluted.

Service is bad. The employee took down names and numbers to put customers on a waitlist, but when a table was free, they didn't phone anyone on the list. They called out the name once and then immediately crossed out their names in the waitlist, and they only seated customers who were standing inside their waiting area. The waiting area is small and wouldn't fit more than 2-3 groups so people were standing outside the restaurant to wait for a table. But the employee didn't check outside or call out any names outside. They didn't notify people on the waitlist if a table is ready and didn't even notify them that they cancelled them from the waitlist. Luckily my group was waiting inside so we got seated, but we were shocked by their service.

After we were seated, the service didn't improve much. They were very slow and disorganised. They didn't bring us bowls, they had a mix up with our food, all our orders came out at very different times, even the dishes within one order of food were brought out at very different times (one order = veggie bowl, soup, rice/noodle, meat, and a drink), and it took so long to get all our food.

They also had vents in the ceiling which I'm not sure were even turned on because condensation was literally dripping down the walls and onto the floor, which is not something I've ever seen at other hot pot restaurants. The soup pot is also pretty small compared to other places and was annoying to cook in. Overall a poor experience with...