Big Way Hot Pot (Kerrisdale) — Restaurant in Vancouver

We have been big fans of Big Way Kerrisdale since it grand opened. In past two months, we witnessed it slowly declining in service and experience is going down for its customers. Tonight, was not a good experience at all. Management needs to attend these issues urgently . The person in charge of assigning tables was a mess. Gave tables to six people who were lining after us , and one table was for eight people, but only one guest has arrived. I thought you only get seated when whole party has arrived? We were first in line on waiting list, (the waiting list online said "no wait". We walked in , there was no waiting list. No parties waiting. We were told we were next. But we put our name in the system anyways, just in case. Lucky we did, we ended up waiting at the door for 30 minutes. I asked why we are still standing there while so many people went past us. The hostess said oh I am sorry, did you talk to a staff? Are you on the waiting list? I said ha? You were the one who greeted us when we walked in and said we were next! She said she doesn't remember at all. Sorry.

Then when we were asked to get our food finally, when we got to the pot and tong station, there were no tongs. They said they are washing them. One server went inside the kitchen and got ONE tong for my husband, the four of us shared a tong. It felt very awkward passing the tong back and forth among the four of us. Other guests just stood there all the way lined up near the entrance. There were foods that were not looking fresh, other foods were dropped in and mixed together, we never seen that in previous months of visits. No staff bothered cleaning or tidying or restocking the foods. There were lots of empty buckets with hardly any food in it. Leftovers like. After we paid, we went to the sauce station. Soy sauce bottle empty. No green onions. No cilantro. Hardly any chilli peppers. Sugar was on the counter scattered, sauce dripped all over the counter, no one cleaned up or refilled. We ended up not getting any sauce at all. Went to our booth and waited. Our pots of foods came as usual speed, it tasted good. Our drinks took a long time. Almost at end of our meal, we were still missing a drink. Chased server. It came immediately after we chased. They left out the order. It's sad to see our favorite restaurant has declined like this. We will wait a while before returning.

Hope management will pay attention to customers reviews and change back to the high quality standard it used to have.

We went at 630pm on a...

A Terrible Dining Experience

Condiment Station Issues The sugar and MSG were misplaced at the condiment station—again! This isn’t the first time. In the past, they even swapped the sugar and salt, which I accidentally added to my pot, making it inedible. I had to reorder the dish. This time, I noticed the mistake before adding anything to my food, but it’s clear that the staff is extremely careless and unprofessional. Incorrect Dish and Poor Service I ordered the #20 sesame peanut dry mix because I can’t eat spicy food. Even the mildest level of spiciness at Big Way is too much for me, so I always choose the sesame peanut mix. However, when my pot arrived, it looked incredibly spicy. I told the server that I had ordered #20, and she insisted that this was correct. Seriously? How can she not know that sesame peanut dry mix doesn’t contain chili? Please train your staff properly!

After a lot of back-and-forth, she took the pot back. A couple of minutes later, she brought it back again, this time with a lot of sesame paste soup. It was obvious she had just rinsed it off. While I could understand this “rinsing” approach, couldn’t she at least drain the water properly? I pointed out again that I ordered a dry mix. She repeated, “This is it,” which was infuriating. I had to send it back again.

When the dish finally came back for the third time, it looked somewhat correct, and since I didn’t have time to wait any longer, I decided to accept it. But as soon as I started eating, the first bite was ice cold! If you’re going to rinse the dish, could you at least use hot water? Eating a cold dish in the middle of winter was absolutely miserable. Unfortunately, I was in a hurry to get back to work and didn’t have time to complain further, so I had to finish the cold sesame peanut mix. Hygiene Issues The dishcloths at Big Way are disgusting! This isn’t the first time I’ve noticed this issue, but it’s getting worse. After the table next to me was cleaned, there was a strong, foul smell of dirty dishcloths that made me feel sick.

Overall, this was an incredibly frustrating lunch. The poor service, lack of professionalism, and hygiene issues need to be addressed immediately. I truly hope the management takes these concerns seriously and improves the quality of the food and service. If not, you’ll definitely lose...

Came here with family, it was their first time trying hot pot like this. I’ve been to both the downtown and kingsway locations a handful of times, so I was familiar with the process and walked them through picking and ordering. The interior of the restaurant is cute and bright.

The food here is cheap if you know how to stack your bowl. The customization aspect is something that draws a lot of people here. The ingredients are decent quality and suitable for most palates. There’s a wide range of meats, seafood, veggies and carbs. You can make your own sauce or follow their guides at the sauce bar. At the end of the meal, you are given a free ice cream in a special flavour.

Most of the clientele here are high school or college students, so it was a bit loud and rowdy when we went. Granted, it was dinner time, so it was unsurprisingly busy. We were seated fairly quickly as a booth was leaving as we arrived, so we were able to skip the waitlist. Service is satisfactory, the only issue I had was that they had forgotten to serve one of our party’s soups for a while. When we tracked down a server and got her to bring it over, it was clear that the soup had been sitting for a while. I had to call the server over again to get fresh broth put into it. While my family member didn’t really mind because it was incredibly busy, there wasn’t any apology. Other than that, the servers are fairly attentive despite the...