Battle of the Sukiyakis: Guu Richmond vs. Well Tea Downtown

Winter is here and that's always a good excuse to have hot pot more often.  Sukiyaki is a Japanese-style hot pot with a soy sauce base that is more of a sauce, rather than a soup like traditional Chinese-style hot pots.  It's actually a pretty simple sauce to make, with the key components being soy sauce, sake, and mirin, which is a rice wine similar to sake.  You can check out cookingwithdog's recipe.  I've tried there recipe before, and it's a bit too concentrated for my tastes, though it is fine with a bit more water.
After the experience at Posh, I was in the mood for even more hot pot and sukiyaki. And since I don't want to write yet another post on Guu in Richmond (post #1, post #2), I thought it would be nice to do a little comparison.

Kitanoya Guu Richmond:

Kem and I shared the sukiyaki (~$11), which was on the daily specials.  This came in a pot that wasn't heated with all the beef and vegetables inside, including napa, pea tips, tofu, and kamaboko.  The sukiyaki was quite strong in flavour, and near the end of the meal my tongue felt a bit overwhelmed.  But, I have to say, initially it was quite good.  I wouldn't mind having this another time and just asking for hot water to add to it as the meal progressed.  The beef was quite good, and I was overjoyed that there were so many konnyaku bundles! The sukiyaki does not come with rice, which is a shame because the sauce was really delicious with rice.  (Handy tip: order the rice from the chef if you're at the bar. It's 100x faster.)

Well Tea Downtown:

Quick bit not related to sukiyaki: For my drink, I got the tieguanyin milk tea with pearls (~$5+$0.50 for pearls).  When I first heard about this a while back, I was thinking, "what? seriously?" Tieguanyin or Iron Goddess tea is a pretty traditional tea you can order when you have dimsum.  My friend highly recommended it at Well Tea (one of the few places that have this drink), and I was hooked since that. It has quite a strong tea flavour, compared to green or red tea, and it's a little bit bitter.  It's quite different from drinking it at dim sum since the milk and sugar calms the strong tea flavour down a bit, and it's quite enjoyable cold, actually.  Overall, this is my new go-to tea for places that have it.  Well Tea does make it a bit sweet, so I recommend getting it less sweet. Does anybody know what other place does tieguanyin milk tea well?

It was still bubbling nearing the end of the meal!

Onto the sukiyaki ($xx)! This one was completely different from the one at Guu.  Instead of a more sauce-like base, it actually seemed like a soy-sauce based soup that was watered down.  It looked liked the soup had also been boiled a bit with beef (from what I know making udon at home).  I don't know, it just wasn't the same and didn't really feel like sukiyaki to me.  The beef was alright, and so was everything else, including the fish tofu, enoki mushrooms, fishballs.  

I found it a bit strange that they used dried shiitake mushrooms instead of fresh ones for sukiyaki.  A huge disappointment for me was the lack of konnyaku thread! I was unimpressed.  This did come with a rice though, so at least I didn't have to pay $1 extra for that. It was also served on top of a little fondue burner.

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Who won? Guu Richmond. Even though it was too salty, I prefer that over the watered down version at Well Tea. They also have konnyaku thread!!

Who’s next? YOU DECIDE. Okay, too much Epic Rap Battle for me, but seriously, give me suggestions on what food item to compare!  This is pretty fun.