Tsim Sha Tsui - Hot Pot in Evanston

Tsim Sha Tsui is a region of Kowloon across the water from Hong Kong. It’s also the name of one of Evanston’s newest and most distinctive eateries.

Moetchandon and I tried it out Monday night. The menu primarily features Asian Hot Pot cuisine, along with a few appetizers and non-hot pot entrees.

Despite the other offerings, Hot Pot is the reason to come to Tsim Sha Tsui. You can see it on the specially-designed tables, with built in hot plates. (Our hot pots were particularly hot, bubbling away - we had to let the meat and vegetable elements cool after being pulled out of the broth before we could bring them to our mouths. We later learned that the server could have turned the temperature down a bit on the hot plates - we'll remember that for next time.)


We started with an appetizer of Shrimp Cake - tasty, especially with the slightly spicy dipping sauce, but not particularly unusual.


You have a choice of selecting a soup base and separate ingredients, or pre-made combination hot pots. Not knowing exactly what we were doing, we opted for the combinations ($12.95 - $16.95 at dinner, a few dollars less at lunch).

I got the Japanese Miso Hot Pot - a mix of beef strips, crab, fish balls, clams, tofu, vegetables and thick wheat noodles in a flavorful chicken-based broth.


Moetchandon had the Thai Hot and Sour Hot Pot - similar to mine, but with more seafood, mung bean noodles, and a spicier broth.


Along with the combinations comes an assortment of sauces and condiments, which you can mix to create your own dipping sauce, tailoring the spice level to your own taste.


We had heard that Tsim Sha Tsui had a connection with the Joy Yee’s Noodle Shop empire; it’s a tenuous connection. According to our server, the manager of the Joy Yee’s around the corner on Davis Street opened Tsim Sha Tsui, so he’s the owner, but as far as I can tell (there was a slight language barrier), there’s no direct investment from Joy Yee’s in Tsim Sha Tsui.

Portions were generous. We each got a second meal at home with our leftovers.

Overall, it was well worth the visit. In part, that’s why we’ll be joining the Evanston Lunch Group™ there March 25.

Tsim Sha Tsui
1627 Chicago Ave
Evanston, IL 60201
(847) 232-7879

We had a nice Evanston Lunch Group™ meal here Wednesday. It wasn't especially busy. That may be due to that fact that most Northwestern students are off to drink and do other things for spring break, but it may also be due to the fact that its name, Tsim Sha Tsui, is almost unpronounceable for many people. Also, that name doesn't do a particularly good job of communicating that the place is all about hot pots. Maybe HotPots! would be a better name.

I ate here soon after it opened and thought it was decent. The broths aren't that flavorful, so we ended up mixing some of the dipping sauces directly in. Most of the ingredients are standard, but they do have a few unusual ones, like some funky little sausages. It's yet another sign that dining options in Evanston are becoming more interesting.

I had the hot and sour broth, which I thought was pretty flavorful. Maybe some of the others who had other broths will chime in. I liked most of the ingredients, although there was one frilly-shaped bean curd that was chewy and pretty funky. I almost ordered the Tong-O as a green, but our server warned that it was very strongly flavored, and he said he personally didn't like it, so I wimped out and got spinach.

One other thing - the controls for the hot plates range from 1 to 5. 5 gives you a fiercely rolling boil, which means it'll take a while for anything coming out of the pot to cool down sufficiently to be edible. I opted for a nice little simmer at 2.

I wasn't overwhelmed with the experience there in our lunch yesterday. Nothing struck me as particularly good. Many of the added ingredients were frozen, and you're basically guessing how long to let them cook. Oh, they also have appetizers on the first page of the menu; the fried octopus ("tentacles tempura") was very chewy/tough.

I had the Szechwan broth. Warning - it was very very hot (spicy hot), much hotter than the hot and sour broth which I also tasted.

nr706 wrote:One other thing - the controls for the hot plates range from 1 to 5. 5 gives you a fiercely rolling boil, which means it'll take a while for anything coming out of the pot to cool down sufficiently to be edible. I opted for a nice little simmer at 2.

I thought liquid can't get any hotter than the temperature at which it boils. Which means an ingredient in a liquid with a fiercely rolling boil (hot plate setting 5) won't cook significantly faster than one with a not-so-fierce boil (say, hot plate setting 3).

nsxtasy wrote:I thought liquid can't get any hotter than the temperature at which it boils. Which means an ingredient in a liquid with a fiercely rolling boil (hot plate setting 5) won't cook significantly faster than one with a not-so-fierce boil (say, hot plate setting 3).

It's true that a liquid will reach a stable temperature at boiling but just like a convection oven moving more of the cooking medium (air in your oven or liquid in your hot-pot) over the object to be cooked will make it faster (to a point). Kinda the opposite of wind chill where moving cold air will remove heat from an object faster that still air.

Yeah, that's my thought, too. For the proteins, especially, it's easier to control how much they cook if they're cooking at a simmer, rather than at a rolling boil. Both liquids might be at 212°F, but I certainly don't want my thinly-sliced lamb to get anywhere near 212°. So, at a simmer, I have a little more time and control to pull it out at an appropriate temp, and that'll also mean it'll take a little less time to cool down to a reasonably edible temperature.

And, yes, some of the ingredients probably had been frozen at some point. At a fine dining establishment, I might take issue with that, but at this student-friendly price point, I think it's okay to serve a few things that might have been previously frozen. YMMV.

Frozen meats are the rule with hot pot -- facilitates thin slicing.

Glad to hear that they've upped the flavor of the broth. I'll definitely be back soon.

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I think Tsim Sha Tsui is a nice addition to Evanston's restaurants. If you want to be presented with a finished meal, it's not the place for you. But I enjoyed cooking my various ingredients in the broth. I found the hot and sour broth a nice base; it is like a simple Thai style (tom yum) broth that you need to flavor as you like with the additional condiments provided. The frozen ingredients didn't bother me because they are small and cook quickly in the broth. I would like to go back and explore more ingredients.

I tried a bit of the herbal broth. This is not vegetarian but rather Chinese healing herbs (according to our waiter) that are added to chicken broth. It had a pleasantly mild and woodsy taste on its own.

I agree with Ken that the octopus was a bit chewy. But we ate it all!