小肥羊 (Xiao Fei Yang), the Mongolian hot pot restaurant in Montreal, is in fact a chain in China. Known as “Little Sheep” in English, it is a well-known brand in China, one that is marketed as an upscale hot pot place. In contrast with Montreal, xiao fei yang is not an all-you-can-eat in China.
The first picture (here above) is that of the Mong Kok branch of Xiao Fei Yang in Hong Kong, located on premium land.
The first one that I encountered was one of Beijing’s Xiao Fei Yang, on Guijie. The guy at the bottom right of the picture is the parking valet!
The next was one in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong. I almost ate there a few times, after running out of ideas for restaurants to eat at. Given that it was roughly 30 degrees Celsius each time, I promptly shook the envy off.
The most surprising place to find a Xiao Fei Yang was in Kaiping (开平), a five-minute walk eastward from the city’s main bus terminal. Kaiping, also known as “Hoiping” in Cantonese, is a town of 700,000 souls, roughly 4 hours from Hong Kong by coach bus and/or speedboat ferry. The city might have UNESCO sites in its vicinity, but does every mid-sized city in China have its Xiao Fei Yang?
hello CommeLesChinois,
nice post. in fact we also like xiao fei yang a lot and visit it all too often… to answer your question we would say every mid-sized city in China has a least one xiao fei yang and the hot pot brand is quite well known. currently the chain offers roughly 350 outlets across the country and is expanding rapidly. if you are interested, we follow this brand and many others in china. we have recently posted 2 articles about xfy that you may want to look at:
http://goldenchinabrands.com/blog/?p=333
http://goldenchinabrands.com/blog/?p=105
would be happy to learn more about the representation of the restaurant over in Canada.
and its HEALTHY too! rgds. GOLDENCHINABRANDS
Interesting blog that you have there! In Canada, or at least in Montreal, I do believe that Xiao Fei Yang filled the niche of “quality hot pot”, with a nice ambiance and a standardized “chain-ified” way of doing things. They don’t advertise in mainstream media outlets, as far as I know (but in Chinese newspapers, as we would expect them to). In local Asian supermarkets, I’ve seen pouches of XFY broth mix being sold. I am curious to know if XFY operates as franchises or has corporate stores…