JIYU Thai Seafood Hot Pot 集渔泰式海鲜火锅 — Restaurant in Markham

Atmosphere: We visited JIYU during lunch, and the restaurant was pleasantly quiet. The atmosphere is spacious, well-lit, and impeccably clean, with a contemporary design that adds a modern touch to the dining experience. A dedicated section for making your own sauces and the delight of unlimited desserts enhance the appeal of the restaurant (which I will go a bit more into detail below).

Food: While JIYU is renowned for its hot pot, the menu also boasts a wide selection of à la carte dishes, such as curry, shrimp balls, and fried rice which helps cater to those who might not be looking specifically for hotpot.

We opted for the Meal for 2 Combo, which included seafood, vegetables, beef, a deep-fried snack, and fried rice. Choosing the hot pot option requires selecting a soup base, which is priced separately. The servers are attentive and will refill the soup as needed. We chose Tom Yum and coconut soups, and both were excellent choices. The Tom Yum, with its balanced spiciness, paired wonderfully with the seafood and meat, creating an extraordinary combination. The coconut soup offered a light, sweet flavor, providing an interesting but not overpowering taste. When ordering the Meal combos, you can enjoy unlimited lamb and beef slices.

Alternatively, you can opt for the à la carte style, selecting ingredients individually, each with its own price. The quality of the food was generally good, although some seafood could have been fresher.

One of JIYU’s highlights is the all-you-can-eat dessert section, featuring watermelon slices, grass jelly, mulberry jelly, passionfruit jelly, pudding, and a soft-serve ice cream machine.

Service: The service at JIYU is exceptional. The staff are considerate and attentive, regularly refilling the soup bases. The variety of utensils provided, including tongs and scoops, enhances the hot pot experience, demonstrating thoughtful attention to detail. This level of care is often underappreciated but greatly enhances the overall dining experience.

Overall, JIYU offers a delightful atmosphere, a diverse menu, and excellent service, making it a standout choice for hot pot enthusiasts and food lovers alike. While I am listing it as a 4/5, in actuality it should be more...

First time trying after making a reservation same day and managed to get a booking. But a bit of a hiccup on the phone with the service rep, I asked for a table for 4 at 7:30pm for reservation for tonight and she said sorry no table available but didn’t offer any other time or date. I followed up by asking if there are other times earlier or later and she said 7:35pm I can make reservation and took my name and number. I found that to be a little weird as it’s only 5 mins apart.

Once we arrived we had to wait 10 mins and was lead to a table that was dirty with sauce all over the table and the seating but brand new chopstick and plates on the table. We flagged down the first waitress we saw and advise the table was not cleaned at all.. nor are seats as it’s filled with sauce all over… they proceeded to wipe the seat but not the table and left. I flagged down another server and advise the table is dirty and it’s unacceptable to seat a customer at a dirty table. He proceeded to apologize and wiped the table and said they must have not wiped the table.

Now the food, we placed the order for the Tom yum and coconut soup base ($17) and the 4 person seafood combo ($199). However, the server mistaken our order and placed a 3 person meal instead of 4. After waiting I would say 20-30min for the platter to arrive to advise them that they inputted the incorrect order, the waiter who took our order walked away and never came back to the table to follow up. I proceeded to flag down yet another waitress and advise we ordered 4 person not 3 person and she advised she will get it sorted out. Which they did.. with the extra set after 10mins. After all that, we got our corrected order and proceeded to actually hotpot.

The meat and seafood are fresh and especially the fish slices. My parents enjoyed the fish slices the most. The dessert/ appetizer and sauce bar are unlimited and you can go and grab whatever you like near the front desk.

I understand that this is a brand new business and newly opened, however, customer service and cleanliness of the area needs to...

“ JIYU Thai Hot Pot, Gibson Drive, Markham “ - A surprising and enjoyable new dining concept experience.

The instance I stepped into the welcoming, ultra-high ceiling, contemporary and brightly lit dining space of this new Markham culinary landscape addition. I immediately have a good premonition regarding the outcome of our impending dining experience. According to expectation, this new concept indeed yielded a most gratifying and enlightening dining interlude.

Offering either a fixed menu or a-la-carte option, we decided on the more flexible ALC alternative. Starting off by choosing a Thai coconut base broth for the hot-pot, we followed up by picking our favorite protein ingredients of fatty beef, scallops, mussels, snakehead fish filet, and shrimp paste. To that, we augmented them with additional house signature Thai Yellow Curry Crab and Prawns dishes, Pineapple Fried rice and Crispy Thai Basil Chicken balls. For crafting our own individual dipping sauce mix, a self-serve sauce counter, featuring at least a dozen sauces and condiments….including some super-spicy Thai chili concoctions, were proudly displayed.

To round off our meal, an impressive AYCE dessert buffet bar, containing a pot-pourri of differently flavored and exotic jellies and puddings were offered…..Grass jelly, Mulberry jelly, Passionfruit jelly, Sawdust pudding, Coffee Panna-cotta, Coconut sago dessert soup with watermelon….. to name a few. An array of soft-ice cream machines were also located nearby!

Overall, the meal was a wonderfully fun, whimsical and enjoyable experience. Taste and texture profile was alluring, exotic and in some cases out of the ordinary. Quantity of food, in part due to the generous dessert offering, was quite overwhelming, resulting in us feeling full to the gilt!

Worthy of a separate mention was the service……. very helpful, friendly...