Lau Hai San

So delicious! Been here the 2^nd time and service has been excellent! They are so kind and attentive you’d be surpirsed. Soup is wonderfully flavored, I always go for the spicy thai #38. Hits the spot as usual and reccomended by my friend and everyone else on Unilocal.Portions are so fufilling, don’t underestimate the portions. Extra meatballs with roe please ($ 3 for an extra 7 – 8? Meatballs, yassssss!!!)
Suggestions:
–go with a good crowd, too much food to eat and the more fun! (Can accommodate large parties and CHEAP!)
–Closed on Wednesdays so planned accordingly!
— get half egg noodles and half vermicelli for your hotpot (variety=tasty experience and included with your hotpot order)
Happy hotpotting! :)

Broth is ok, they give you a good variety of stuff, workers and owner is rude and not friendly at all. You would think the owner would at least be nice to his customers and thank you for your business but no. Guess business is doing so well he doesn’t care whether he loses customers or not. He asked three tables around us how is everything and if they needed anything and he just walked by and looked at our table and didn’t ask anything. No one greets you when you walk in. Paid and said thank you to the owner and he just stared at me and walked away. Rude!
No one checked up on us. You gotta flag down the workers if you need stuff.
Parking sucks, fish ball is bomb, this place does get busy. Wish the service was better though.
Won’t be coming back, there’s no many other hot pot places.

I love it. We all love it! :D very delicious hotpot here and the smell of the place is very good. Good vending~ the Thai hot pot is very delicious and good portion for $ 26, size medium. The tamarind beef was good too, very nice flavoring. I also like the other appetizer that everyone else got. Forgot the name. It had dried shrimp and shrimp inside it. That was pretty good too but only with the fish sauce and veggies. The coconut snails were okay, small portion but still good (I like oc and lau better)
I am not sure about their consistency with the amount and type of seafood/​veggies that they’re suppose to give. Came here twice: First time was a medium hot pot with all the goodies. Second time we ordered a large but they didn’t give SHRIMP and the flower looking MUSHROOM. We asked for shrimp and they gave 4 pieces, same as a medium. 0.0 so. Yea I don’t know. I think it was suppose to be 6 pieces. But the flavoring of the soup is so good~~~~ I highly recommend it! Please try it if you love Thai hot pot.
My favorite is the fish ball with roe!!! YOU HAVE TO GET EXTRA!!! IT IS SO GOOD!!! DONT REGRET, JUST GET IT!

Lau serving can vary depending on how many people is in your party. It comes in small, medium, or large.
So far I have tried:
–Banh khot: 3.5÷5
–Spicy Thai Lau: 4.5÷5
(comes with a side of either rice, egg noodles, or vermicelli noodles)
Tip: you can get a refill for your broth for free!

Here’s a super fobby review: Lau Hai San is super ngon and it’s really re~ too.
Translation: Lau Hai San is is super delicious and it’s really cheap too.
Tip: it also photographs well on Instagram ~ prob can get you 100 likes if you use the right filter and hastags.
Luv it!

When everyone thinks about hot pot, they all think shabu shabu. But let’s not forget the lost warrior, the Vietnamese hot pot!!! There’s so many versions of the Vietnamese hot pot that you can’t miss out on!
After a long drive from Santa Cruz, my two visiting friends have never tried Vietnamese hot pot! Even though my mom makes it the best, I can’t ask her to whip it out for us last minute so we head to Lau Hai San! They had no clue what to order so they entrusted me with this task.
I was with 2 6ft Chinese guys aka they eat a lot. No questions asked. So we ordered the medium 3 – 4 people, Lau Seafood Thai lan. Simple snd delicious. We also ordered 4 side plates of beef, 2 extra plates of egg noodles. My friends loved it! Normally Chinese hot pot is bland and the sauces flavor it up, where as for Vietnamese hot pot, we bring out the flavor in the broth! They cleaned it up well. There wasn’t even a single drop left! The bill was only $ 50 split between 3 people.
Parking is a mess btw, the lot is pretty small and you might get towed if you parked in the lot next door.

Best hot pot in San Jose! #38 Spicy Thai Seafood is the bomb!!! Its actually not spicy though, but still delicious! My boyfriend and I always order another side of white noodles since the portion they give usually isn’t enough. Total comes out to be ~$ 28 (excluding tip)

Our official best hot pot ever and it just happens to be located near our house in San Jose. Friendly service good pots good beer. Just don’t come on Wednesday cause that’s the day they close. Parking can be a problem if need be, just park on a nearby street. Hard to find a place that an Anglo & Asian couple agreed on, this is that place. We’ve been eating here for a couple years and they’re very consistent in a good way.

Came here to celebrate little brother’s birthday! I’m a huge fan of hot pot and always open trying out new places. This must be the first Vietnamese hot pot I ever tried. This is location is on Senter road. The parking space is small so I prefer getting there early. My brother made reservations for a large party. I prefer getting a large pot for 4 people and medium for 2 people.
We got the spicy Thai. When our hot pot arrived, I noticed the fish balls with the yellow egg sauce inside. Those are my favorite on the menu. When you eat them, the flavor tasted so heavenly. But you must eat it slow with a small bite because it’s really hot (burned my tongue once lol).
Overall, highly prefer to come to this location especially if you’re a hot pot lover!

Not the greatest. Unfortunately, the hotpot restaurants around here aren’t as good as the ones in Socal. My boyfriend and I came here because I was craving the Thai hotpot shortly after our vacation in LA. I was hoping to have the same experience here as I did down south. The broth was okay. The only memorable thing that came from our meal, sadly, was the fish balls with the fish eggs inside. Those were tasty and definitely different from the plain fish balls I was used to eating. Won’t be coming back.

Came here on a Saturday night before I left for SoCal again. BEWARE: it is quite difficult to find parking as it is a small lot and the next door parking lot is closed off (they even have a security guard to prevent people from parking and coming over here).
I came around 8:30 and this place was packed. However, it only took about 15 minutes for us to finally get seated as people were already leaving. This place is a traditional family style hot pot where you share ONE hot pot. They have different sizes (small (1 – 2 people), medium (3 – 4 people) and large (5 – 6 people)) and there are different kinds of hot pot as well as other dishes. I personally didn’t look at the other dishes because I knew I wanted to get the hot pot, and we got #1 which was the Thai Land hot pot. My family and I ordered extra yellow noodles as well since there was 4 of us.
Service: OK. They didn’t have the best of service, mostly because it was super crowded and the tables itself were small. The workers could be a little more personable, because I could tell the waiters would get impatient and just move dishes around to make more room, but abruptly. Since my table was at a corner, it was also hard to flag someone down to ask for something.
Food: Overall, the hot pot was awesome. It took a while for the pot to boil up but once it did, we put everything in the soup and just ate. There was this white dumpling thing that had some garlic sauce in it (?), and it was so good that I wished I had just ate that. There was a lot of seafood in our pot, and although at the beginning the soup was salty, the amount of condiments they gave us later watered down the soup to the right taste.
Overall: I really like this place. They could work on the service more but it wasn’t too bad. This place does get crowded so if you’re hungry, make sure to come a little early to secure parking space and get in line! I will def come back with friends, totally recommend for all ages though!

Your taste buds will run wild after you dine in here!
My boyfriend and I came to dinner here last night. We have been wanting to try this place for a while but we never found the chance to. Since yesterday was a rainy night, we decided hotpot would perfect to warm us up from the cold and gloomy weather.
Food — For appetizers, we ordered Bo Tai Me and #38 Spicy Thai Seafood Hotpot.
*Bo Tai Me — Raw meat served with watercrest, rice crackers, and tamarind sauce. Basically, the sauce is cooked over the grill and you cook the meat in the pan. You eat it with rice crackers topped with watercrest. The tamarind sauce is tangy and a little spicy and full of flavor.
*Spicy Thai Seafood Hotpot — Extremely flavorful with tangy, sweet, and spicy mix. Comes with mussel, scallop, shrimp, fish paste with tofu sin, tofu, squid, imitation crab, enoki mushroom, long mushroom, popping fishball, and one other type of fishball. It comes with a side of vermicelli noodles and a huge dish of vegetables.
We ordered the small size and it was more than enough for the two of us. I do want to note that some of the items comes in three, instead of two or four, so whoever you are sharing the hotpot with would be to fight for the last piece!
Service — They will get what you request for, but I don’t expect much for a hotpot place.
Ambiance — Typical asian restaurant with light décor. The restaurant has a lot of seating and when we arrived last night, the restaurant was pretty filled. Luckily, we got seated within 10 minutes.
Overall, I will come back to try the other broths and appetizers they have. I am extremely impressed with the flavors from my appetizer and the broth.

Love the flavor of the Spicy Thai Seafood Hot Pot and the variety of seafood and veggies that come with the meal, but found that after dining here I suffered a massive migraine that knocked me out once I got home and was excessively thirsty, carrying onto the next day. I see that I am not alone as another Unilocaler mentioned having a headache due to MSG, which makes sense in retrospect since I am pretty sensitive to MSG. Though I didn’t have issues with my previous visits.
For those who aren’t sensitive, you’re in for a treat! The small Thai Hot Pot comes with clams, mussels, squid, shrimp, fish balls with roe, fish balls with imitation crab, imitation crab, oyster mushroom, enoki mushroom and a plate of vegetables as well as a choice of either rice, egg noodle or rice noodles. The broth is salty, savory but is rich in seafood flavors, bright with lemon grass and keffir lime leaves and the distinct flavor of onion and bell peppers. The items served with the broth are well chosen, though could use some work especially the mussels which still contain the byssus threads/​filaments which hold them to rocks is a bit off putting. The plate of vegetables «included» is charged on your bill, FYI. However, the fish balls with roe is the star of the show and I always love pouring the hot broth over my noodles to finish the meal. The small pot is well enough and then some for two people to share.
As for service, don’t expect amazing service here. The waitress I had was cold and almost impatient. There isn’t much checking up here either. The parking lot here is pretty horrible as it holds less than 20 cars in the plaza shared amongst 4 stores.
+They accept cash and card here.

Who doesn’t love affordable hot pot?
I’ve only been here once but I can’t wait to come back. I ordered the #38 Thai hot pot (which seems to be the most popular) in the medium size.
The broth is super yummy and has that sweet/​sour taste to it. I believe the description stated it was spicy but it seemed more mild than spicy to me. The hotpot included shrimp, mussels, clams, tofu, fish balls, scallops, imitation crab, and enoki/​regular mushrooms. You also have a choice of yellow/​white noodles on the side. At first glance, I didn’t think it was enough to fill up 4 people but I completely underestimated it! By the end of the meal, everyone was full and satisfied. The medium size hot pot was ~27 dollars, that’s less than 10 dollars depending on how many people you split it with!

I came here for the hotpot! I had ordered the Thai spicy pot in a small size and it’s enough to feed 2. I thought that I wouldn’t get full, but boy was I wrong. It’s definitely filling and super yummy!
The broth is to die for, it’s sweet and spicy, absolutely delicious! My best friend got mad at me for drinking the soup in the beginning because she was afraid of me drinking it all before we could even eat lol.
The hotpot comes with enoki, imitation crab, lobster balls, fish balls with roe (my favorite!!!), scallops, calamari, shrimp, mushrooms, clams, mussels, tofu, fish cakes, a plate of veggies and the choice of egg noodles or rice noodles. Definitely a good variety and you can also add on side orders as well. I kind of wished that I had ordered more fish balls with roe because they are so delicious! On the table, they give you fish sauce and some habanero spicy sauce! The spicy sauce is amazing but it is definitely spicy so eat with caution.
Customer service was what you would expect at an Asian restaurant. But the best part about this place is that bottled beer is $ 2.75! Yes, $ 2.75! So cheap :)
Honestly though, come for the hotpot! You will not be disappointed!

Came here with a friend and she recommended the #38. We ordered a small and it was more than enough food for the both of us.
The #38 had a Thai based soup and variety of seafood such as clams, mussels, fish balls, shrimp etc. You also get a choice of noodles and a plate of veggies.
The thai soup is super tasty, its tangy and tomato-​y. I usually have to use dipping sauce for my seafood and meats for hot pots but I actually didn’t need any because the soup was so flavorful.
This place is super affordable, with beer and splitting a hot pot, it came out to be around $ 16 per person.

Came in at 730pm with my family and had to wait for about 15 mins since the place was full. It is a no frills Vietnamese hotpot place. While waiting, we realized that most people went with the Thai seafood hot pot, so we decided to go with it as well.
It’s really interesting that the pot is surrounded by a rim filled with seafood, tofu, greens, and other ingredients for the hotpot. The stove runs on gas cans, and ours ran out in the middle of the meal. The place was pretty busy, so it took a while for one of the servers to help switch the can out.
The broth is really flavorful, but really salty, and I suspect, full of MSG as well, since all of us became really, really thirsty right after the meal.
Overall, it is a pretty OK meal, and it is really affordable too, but I probably won’t go out of the way for this, since the seasoning is kind of strong, and the waiters seems kinda confused that I can’t understand Vietnamese (happens all the time when I try getting a manicure at a Vietnamese nail place too).
I might come back when I’m in the area, and am craving for some hotpot.

SPICY THAI SEAFOOD HOTPOT #38 !! (small size — $ 23)
Lots of seafood! Big variety… enoki mushroom, oyster mushroom, mussels, shrimp, squid, clams, fishballs, imitated crab, scallops, tofu, and shrimp balls. The best thing is the cod roe filled fishballs. heaven in your mouth when you bite into it…
The broth is SOO flavorful and isn’t too spicy! I could seriously drink this all day… it’s that good.
The hotpot also comes with a plate of veggies (cabbage and mustard greens) and your choice between egg or rice noodles (or half/​half)
Sharing the small size for 2 people is definitely enough!
The service is friendly and fast!
Note * they close on Wednesdays!

Besides phở and ramen, what’s perfect on a cold, cold day? Hot pot!
I’ve had homemade Vietnamese hot pot before, but this was something different! (Is it really Vietnamese when the dish is called Spicy Thai Hot Pot though?) Steph S. and I came on a Saturday night at 8pm and had to wait around 15 minutes.
The small ($ 23) feeds two people and comes with a lot of items! On the hot plate, you get enoki mushrooms, tofu, fish balls, shrimp, clams, fish balls with roe, scallops, and mussels. On the side, you get a plate of veggies, noodles and/​or rice. My sister and I were stuffed! Not that we’re complaining…
It seems like even if you have a bigger party and order a bigger sized hot pot, you still get one pot but with more items.
Although a bit different than Taiwanese hot pot or Japanese shabu, it was a delight to try!

LOVE this place.
I usually get the Spicy Thai Seafood Hot Pot. The broth is so yummy and delicious. Reminds me of my family’s homemade hot pot. They have three different sizes. Small 1 – 2 people, Medium 3 – 4 people, and Large 5 – 6 people. The small is pretty small. If you’re a party of two and someone has a larger appetite, I would recommend the medium. The second time I came here, it was me, my bf, and another couple. We opted for the large since both guys have bigger appetites. You get a large plate of veggies and a plate of noodles. You can choose from rice noodle or egg noodle, we did half and half. It was enough for everyone to be stuffed. We also ordered banh khot for an appetizer and it was really good. Great appetizer to start you off with.
This place is legit.