One of the world's best-known hot pot chains is coming to Calgary.
Haidilao is getting ready to open at Northland, at 5111 Northland Drive NW. "Opening Soon" signs are now up at the northwest Calgary shopping centre.
No opening date has been announced.
If you know Haidilao, that's all you need. If you don't: it's a hot pot restaurant famous for servers who swing noodles through the air at your table, sauce bars the size of a buffet, and service that's become part of the brand.
It also appears to be Haidilao's first restaurant in Alberta.
What Haidilao is
Haidilao was founded in Sichuan, China, in 1994, and has since grown into one of the biggest hot pot chains in the world.
At Haidilao, the kitchen doesn't cook your meal. You do.
You pick one or more broths, then order plates of raw ingredients, like thin-sliced beef and lamb, seafood, vegetables, tofu, dumplings and noodles, and cook them yourself in a pot simmering in the middle of the table.
A meal can easily run a couple of hours.
The noodle dance
Order the hand-pulled noodles at many Haidilao restaurants, and a server comes to your table with a long strand of dough. They stretch it, swing it, twist it and whip it through the air in a choreographed routine, then drop it into your pot.
It's become one of the most shared things about the chain online.
Some locations also have Sichuan face-changing, a traditional Chinese opera art where a performer seems to switch masks in an instant.
The service
Haidilao's service is almost as famous as its food.
Depending on the location, people waiting for a table have been offered snacks, games and other free extras. At the table, servers hand out aprons to protect clothes, hair ties for long hair, and bags to keep phones away from splashing broth.
Never had hot pot?
You don't need to know what you're doing.
Pick your broth. Pots are usually split, so a table can have a spicy Sichuan broth on one side and something milder on the other.
Order your ingredients. Thin meat cooks in seconds. Vegetables, tofu and dumplings take longer.
Build a sauce. Hot pot restaurants usually have a sauce station, with sesame paste, garlic, chili, green onion, cilantro and more.
Keep going. Food comes in rounds, not all at once, which is a big part of the fun.
First in Alberta
Haidilao opened its first Canadian restaurant in Richmond, B.C., in December 2018.
Haidilao Canada's reservation list now shows restaurants in Richmond, Vancouver, Burnaby, Markham, Scarborough, downtown Toronto, Mississauga and Montreal. None are in Alberta.
That makes the Northland restaurant appear to be Haidilao's first in the province.
From The Last of Us to hot pot
Northland has had quite a few years.
It opened in 1971 as Northland Village Mall, an indoor mall in northwest Calgary. Most of it closed in late 2021 ahead of a major redevelopment.
Before the bulldozers, Hollywood moved in. The empty mall was turned into a post-apocalyptic ruin for HBO's The Last of Us. Much of Episode 7, "Left Behind," where Ellie and Riley explore an abandoned mall, was filmed there. Crews rebuilt storefronts inside the gutted building and even brought in a carousel.
Then the redevelopment went ahead. Most of the old indoor mall came down, and the property was rebuilt as an open-air shopping centre, now called Northland.
Now the same place that played an abandoned mall on TV is filling back up, with a hot pot restaurant on the way.
When does it open?
The signs say "Opening Soon." Haidilao hasn't announced a date.
We'll update this story when it does.
Sources
Haidilao Canada, reservation directory
Northland, Northland Calgary
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