Hai Di Lao Hot Pot

A little pricey but the food is fresh and we’ve already gone back. Ordering the combos is a great way to go and one order of the dancing noodles is enough for two people. I really like the beef balls as well. They have a great appetizer bar.

Low quality base ingredients that need a lot of sauce to have any taste, tacky mall environment catering to the local mall rats. What’s not to hate?

First time to this type of restraunt. They did a great job explaining everything, keeping us refilled on drinks and soup, and I enjoyed the experience very much. All the extra touches were nice (iPad for ordering, aprons, dipping bar, noodle dance). I would definitely go back here.

Want to try a Chinese hot pot restaurant with great service and an iPad ordering system? Then this is your place! I have been here 3 times total now and am always impressed with how efficient, and helpful the servers are. Everyone has their own individualized mini pot, so you can choose whichever soup base you like. I like the tomato soup. It’s a bit on the saltier, more flavorful side. The sauce bar is also awesome. You can add whatever flavors you like and make your own creation. The ingredients are also very fresh. The meat is AMAZING! My two favorites are the rib eye and the short rib. It was SO good my family and I ordered 8 plates of the beef! The vegetables are also really yummy. The variety is great to satisfy all tastebuds. This restaurant is a bit expensive, especially when comparing to other hot pot restaurants because everything is ordered a la carte. Would be nice to see them have combination options! Can’t wait to come back!

Hai Di Lao is good food, please don’t get me wrong. It’s good hot pot, and I like that the individual broth pots are set down in the table.
However, for its price it’s a little overrated. You could get equally delicious hot pot or shabu shabu for cheaper in the area.
Went with my mom and she was really looking forward to the dancing noodles thing, but I guess they weren’t doing it that day. All the ordering can be done on an iPad, but the servers come and help you out anyway if you’re clearly confused (like we were)
I’m a little iffy on the aprons they give you to wear so you don’t splash on your clothes — The idea is super cute, but I wonder if they wash them between guests… Thinking they might not since I noticed some dried food on my Mom’s and decided against the apron…
It has a very interesting vibe, and looks much bigger inside than it does on the outside! Their sauce bar is pretty awesome, and they have lots of soy free options for broth! (Which I love since usually every broth is soy based in shabu shabu)
All in all it was a good meal, just really expensive — I wouldn’t come here if I was really hungry, or even just hungry. You can really rack up a bill here if you’re actually hungry! But this day it was my mom’s treat, so I’m not complaining. I just probably wouldn’t come here with my broke, starving friends!

Quality hot pot at a higher price. I had this chain when I studied abroad in Shanghai and was excited to try this place in the US. It’s still very Chinese as they basically only spoke Mandarin, but still serves a solid hot pot meal. After basically being demanded to be seated, I was given a table and allowed to order on my iPad in the seating room beforehand.
I got the herbal broth soup which is comparable to Little Sheep, and the beef and veggie combo. Before waiting for the food, I made my own sauce at the customization bar which had lots of options ranging from cilantro, garlic, ginger to soy and sesame sauces. The bar also has oranges and red bean and grass jelly dessert, (the red bean is rather bland but the grass jelly was herbal and refreshing).
The hot pot set itself was pretty satisfying– with good quality beef and a nice array of vegetables (woodear mushrooms, cabbage, enoki). The noodles are also made fresh and have a nice firm texture even after a long time soaking in broth. When I went they had a noodle dancer available for other tables, so we got to watch the show for free! Another highlight is that you are given an apron to avoid ruining your clothes.
Although this place is pricey, you can mostly expect a quality meal and experience that is a nice treat once in a while. It’d probably also help to bring a mandarin speaker. And extra points for mouthwash in the bathroom!

My new favorite place for hotpot!
Their pork broth is so flavorful, I love all the sides they had.
We ordered mix mushroom (shiitake & enoki), Clear Noodles, Beef, Spam, Tripe, Cow Throat, Pork Blood, and Fish cod. The portion is not too bad. We had 4 people and what is awesome is their sauce bar! They have so many great sauce bar choices– along with appetizer — mix wet peanuts, edamame, cucumber, and seaweed. (I also put the seaweed in my broth, it made it taste soooo good)
I liked that they give you apron so you don’t stain your clothes, also with your soup you have the temperature setting in front of you, so you can adjust your heat. what else haven’t they thought about?
It’s funny when you order ice water, or water melon juice they don’t give you ice cubes? Oh well. Overall, I had a great experience! I can’t wait to come back soon!

We came here for Christmas Day Lunch and we really enjoyed the service and food. This is a hot pot place where you choose your soup base and then order meat and veggies to your liking. The best thing is the hot pot is non-​communal. You get your own hot pot to cook your goodies. I am a germaphobe so this was perfect for me. You can also make your own sauces and they have limited appetizer and desserts. If you want a little entertainment, then order the dancing noodles. For $ 4 this guy will twirl around a piece of dough into noodles.
They also dress you with an apron so your clothes don’t get dirty. If you have long hair, they’ll give you a hair piece to tie your hair back. The service was attentive and friendly. I would recommend this place if you are craving hot pot.

It’s worth 1hr45min drive from Santa Monica on a Friday afternoon. Go figure.
I’ve not had many hot pot in LA since the weather doesn’t make much sense here. That being said, this is by far my favorite hot pot place across NYC, LA and SH. I’ve never been to the HDL in China so I have no way of comparing.
The tomato soup base is to die for. It’s really what differentiated them from every other hot pot restaurant in the universe. I barely even have to dip any sauce when the meat was cooked in the tomato soup. I was pretty sad about no dipping though because I had created such a masterpiece concoction from the DIY sauce station.
The quality of the food is undeniably top-​notch. The portion definitely needs improvement. But at $ 50 a head, the price is almost disgraceful to call it a Chinese restaurant.
Did you know that they take reservations?! After a long drive and an hour wait, I’m still giving it a five-​star. Call me crazy.

I am a huge hot pot fan. Came here because my family really really really wanted to check out the first US branch of the all too famous HaiDiLao. We’ve been to HaiDiLaos in China so wanted to check out how this compared.
Let me say this — I cannot believe how unreasonably busy this place is. It is insane. We made a reservation days in advance, got the confirmation and everything, and still had to wait an hour and a half before we were seated. Obviously we were pretty grumpy by the time we started eating. Service is very meh — service definitely feels like service we got at a typical Shanghai restaurant, with a «you WANT to eat here more than we want to serve you» attitude. When we tried to complain about the long wait, the response from the host was an apathetic shrug, and our waitress had a bit of an attitude. While I guess that flies back in Shanghai, it really sucks here where good service is the norm especially if you’re paying $ 50+ a person and waiting more than an hour.
I think ordering on the iPad is clunky and not very intuitive. Not only, but they take the iPad away from you (maybe too many broken iPads in the soup?) so if you want to order more you have to call the waitress back anyways. When you order, she goes through and confirms everything, so I don’t really understand what the benefit is to having the iPads over the traditional checkbox sheets of paper other than that it seems fancy. It definitely seemed to add to the clunkiness, and scrolling through the selections on the iPad menu was not intuitive at all and took twice the amount of time.
The hot pot is the kind where you each get an individual pot, which isn’t how I remember them in China. Sure, everyone gets their own soup base, but you essentially have to pay the soup base fee per person and I also feels like it takes away the family aspect of it. I think the food itself is quite overpriced — the meat is definitely higher quality and very fatty, but it is proportionally expensive so not sure if it’s really an improvement. I personally thought the selection of veggies wasn’t very extensive — for instance they didn’t have winter melon! Sauce bar was good, and the pickled side dishes bar was a nice plus. The seafood platter is way overpriced and very disappointing, so I would not recommend.
Overall, I thought HaiDiLao was pricey without seeing an improvement in quality. I definitely would recommend a place like Little Lamb over this.

This is my first time here! I came with my work for our company holiday party. My boss said this place has multiple restaurants in China, and that California has only ONE location? Arcadia! I was waiting for hotpot all and was saving my appetite for it. I’m sure glad I did!
Basically, you’re served meats, veggies, noodles and various soups item fresh to your table. Throw them into your individual soup «hot pot» in front of you, and enjoy!
The soup bases range from just broth, to spicy, or very spicy. I got as spicy as spicy can get. Let’s just say, I was chugging my water and tea constantly. It was soooo spicy and tasty at the same time!
The beef and seafood platter are definitely my chose of protein. Everything is incredibly fresh. You also have plenty of options of veggies and sides as well, such as peanuts and fruits you can self serve from the salad bar. This place has everything!
Not only is the food delicious, but they also have one of the chefs entertain guests by making noodles from raw dough and stretching and pulling into noodles.
This is such a great family and friends atmosphere. Def high on my list of eateries in this area. Be sure to come hungry. Food is plentiful. Your guests will be raving about this place all week
I’ll be back Hai di Lao!

Seriously, what happen to Hai Di Lao? The food here used to be petty good.
Food: We ordered the seafood combo. The seafood is not fresh at all and the beef is not tender. Very disappointed that they serve this kind of food for the price that they’re charging. I like their red bean and herbal jelly at the dessert bar better, than the food that they serve on the table. The food here used to be pretty good when it first open, its nothing but hype now. But the broth is still not bad, and I like the way you get an individual pot for each person. That’s about it.
Location: This place is located in Santa Anita mall. Although they’ve plenty of parking, but this place is always packed up on weekends.
Service: The only thing that is worth paying here is their service. The server is very attentive, and knows what you need right away without you even asking. Probably the best service for a Chinese restaurant that I’ve ever been to in Los Angeles area.
Price: Way over price for the quality of food that they’re serving. You can have better hot pot for fraction of the price else where. Its about $ 100 for two people. Come on, really?
It’s sad to see the quality of another iconic Chinese restaurant going down the drain. I’m pretty sure their business is not as good as before. Probably won’t come back again, unless there’s some kind of promotion.

On my wife’s recommendation, my daughter, her boyfriend and I joined her for lunch at this relatively new restaurant at the Santa Anita Shopping Center. Located towards the southwest corner of the mall, the combination of Hot Pot and Shabu Shabu are melded together in a rather unique combination of broths and flavors. You can see the full selection on a table specific i-​Pad which does all the ordering for you via the net. You just need to select a meat and broth, and what ever you want as extras, such as rice; yeah, the nickel and dime you…
Among the broths, spicy is ever popular among the clientele, but another new one is herbal, which I tried with lamb. Their self-​serve Ban Chon table was a nice touch, with sesame bean sprouts, moist peanuts and melt in your mouth mushrooms served as appetizers, as we waited for our selections. In addition, there’s a selection of dipping sauces you can have solo, or paired with whatever groove you’re in; I enjoyed the creamy miso sauce with sesame oil.
Once the broth arrives, quickly get your vegetables and noodles cooking because the meat comes out pretty fast. The serving of meat is rather meager, and poses larger, as they are served loosely folded, which appears heaping. I made the mistake of loading up on appetizers, and was stuffed by the time I ate everything. I tried their red bean dessert, and felt it was not as sweet as it should be, although maybe they were trying to be a little healthy with the dessert. All in all, this would be a place I would take for entertainment value, as they have the noodle man pull strings of noodles from a solid mass of pasta, as well as the bibs they have you wear during the meal, so you don’t mess up your business suit.

So yum! Chinese style hot pot which is a little different than say Mongolian hot pot like at little sheep. Has the sauces bar which includes sesame sauce that is hard to find outside of California. We came for lunch and the price was very reasonable. The combo players come with veggies and noodles in addition to a choice of pork. The two of us got a plate of beef as well.
Wait staff is very friendly. Even though we are Asian they assumed we could speak Mandarin which was not far off since one of us could. Bringing a Chinese friend may not be the worst idea by any means!
I had the numbing soup base and was crying while I ate. That being said I would probably order it again. Hahaha.

It was on the pricey side. We ordered a combo and two broths for about $ 45 but my husband kept saying that he could have easily got another combo on top.
For me, it was fine but for my Americanized husband, he wanted more meat but on the bright side, it left room for boba on the way home!
Will I be back? Prolly not with my husband. Is it trendy and a place you would take your date (let’s be real… people don’t really eat during dates!)? Yes!
As all these people were walking out… holding doors, holding hands, and linking arms… it made my husband and I definitely feel like we picked a place more appropriate for a date night.
My daughter was fascinated with the noodle makers! They were talented for sure~

I’ve heard that this restaurant is famous for their superb service for quite a while now, so I decided to come check it out! Came here around 1:30 on a Saturday afternoon and the wait was only about 5 minutes. The overall service was good, but not really AMAZING like everyone made it seem.
As for the food, the Angus beef was super tender and tasty! However, everything else was honestly pretty average. The soup flavors were pretty standard, nothing too adventurous. I got the spicy pork bone soup base as she recommended it as not TOO spicy. Either we had different standards of spiciness or she lied, because it was SOOO damn spicy. I had to ask for a different flavored soup base b/​c I couldn’t deal with the pork bone soup T_​_​T
All in all, it’s a cool restaurant to try out to see if it lives up to the hype, but I don’t think I would come back again. I’d rather go to Boiling Point to be honest lol #basic

The food here taste like any other hot pot restaurant in SVG! I wouldn’t say there is anything special about the food. It’s still the same style of cooking but with different soup base selections. I recommend the tomato base soup. It’s not too sour, non spicy, and has a nice tangy flavor.
What makes this special is the decoration, ambience, and customer service. The restaurant definitely had the Asian theme with good taste of decoration and furnishing. I felt like we were in a high class restaurant but you only eating hot pot! Very different than most Chinese restaurants in SGV! I would say this place is very appropriate if you want to take someone you want to impress with good customer service.
Lastly, let’s talk about customer service. I can’t remember the last time I went to an Asian restaurant and received world class service! The server is very attentive and pleasant. They filled up our water without asking. Came out with fresh plates. And most importantly, they keep checking win with you. I was so amazed with the service and would come back on special occasions because this place was pretty expensive. But it’s worth coming here if you want to go somewhere nice with good customer service for hot pot!

Customer service is the best here! We had a party of 10 and our waitress was very attentive to us but at the same time gave us time to enjoy or food. Management also kept checking in with us to make sure everything was too our liking. Management even honored our graduates special request to have jello. The restaurant does serve jello, but it is the Chinese herbal kind. Kitchen made us some green and red jello just because our graduate requested it.
Yes, I can see how there can be a long wait for this place. They allowed us to eat at our leisure so we didn’t feel rushed through our meal. However, this place does take reservations so definitely should take advantage of that.
I love the fact that we each have our individual pots of soup and we can cook whatever we want at our leisure.
Can’t wait to come back for more great food and service!

The infamous hotpot chain from mainland China has finally made its way to American soil. Known for having top notch service (rare to find in mainland) and high quality meats, I was excited to find out they had opened a location in SoCal.
As the wait can be more than an hour, they offer extra services from massages to pedicures at their Chinese locations while you wait. I was hoping for the same here but California has some extremely strict hygiene laws, along with much higher wages so it wouldn’t be possible. But they do give you free beverages and/​or snacks while you wait. And there are board games for you to kill time with at their patio. You can always shop around the mall and they’ll text you once your table to ready.
One thing I love about them is that each person has their own individual pots so you won’t have to worry about other people «accidentally» stealing that piece of meat you just threw in! And they have numerous soup bases to choose from.
All the sauces are self– serve so you can mix up any type of concoctions you think of. And there are tons of little snacks, fruits and veggies that are also included with your meal in the self-​serve section.
I recommend ordering their fatty beef dish as it will soak in the flavors of the broth very well (and the fat is just so damn tasty). The sirloin cuts are damn good too and quite thick compared to other hotpot joints.
If you’re a fan of sausages, be sure to order a plate. Just imagine mini sized Oscar Mayer sausages being cooked in that tasty broth! They have the sausages diced up on the corners that once it finishes cooking, you’ll think it was an octopus!
The veggies are a little bit on the pricey side but you gotta order at least a couple dishes to keep that balance! Enoki mushrooms are always a must have when eating hotpot, along with spinach and cabbage!
In the mood for noodles? They will send a man who will do a live performance in front of you while he hand pulls the noodles onto your dish. Don’t forget to take a quick clip for your Instagram!
Their iPad menu can be a bit hard to use and not the most user-​friendly but their servers will be happy to assist you. Just be sure to let them see what you’ve placed onto your order before you click «submit order» to be sure the kitchen receives it.
Enjoy!

Dined in with my bf and his dad at 9:15 pm in the Promenade next to Charming Charlie on a beautiful Tuesday night, we were seated quickly which is a plus.
Décor was modern and chic, all the tables had individual stoves which is better for sharing certain items without commitment on only one soup base. They even provide each of your guest with an apron and hair tie for a worry free experience.
Soup base was okay, wouldn’t say good or bad but recommend the sauce bar for your preferences. Each plate or combo we ordered was small and comparable to Jazz Cat individual portions. We ordered three soup base, one beef combo with veggies, three regular sized eggs, three side items, dancing noodle, one lamb plate, two small rice and one rib eye beef plate for a whooping total of $ 86 for only just food? The food was okay but the lamb was fabulous.
When you order on the ipad, it suppose to show you the price buts showed $ 36 without one plate or beef and lamb. Assuming the total would be over $ 60 and not $ 110. After looking at the bill, they over charged us by $ 10 for a veggies plate we didn’t order. Make sure to look at your bill carefully.
Service can really improve to match the décor and give each patrons a personal experience. When we asked questions on how to order, they looked puzzled and referred to another person. Each person kept saying oh this is your first time but didn’t want to help us. We had to ask for the basics utensils.
Overall, we were hoping for a better experience for what they charged but left hungry and unsatisfied. I think 2.3 stars is harsh but I don’t have reasons to mark it higher either.