Kavi T.

Food is good but the line is always so long. Every time I tried coming here the wait is like 1hr+ regardless time of the day. And they are pretty strict about their closing time (e.g maybe let you stay 15 min past their closing. So you really do feel rushed to eat if you get seated 30 min before closing, which might be the main con of the experience.

Han W.

Very good hotpot. Easy ordering with a tablet and large menu. Great broth and ingredients. Everyone at my table was impressed with the beef tongue. The sauce bar is pretty nice. It wasn't too expensive for a party of 6 despite ordering plenty.

Amanda M.

I came back here again and arrived 10 minutes before opening to line up. Right after I lined up, lots of people began to join and started to line up. Overall, I spent 2 hours here for hot pot, it explains why the wait can be long if you are not able to get in the first round right when they open. The food here is expensive but quite tasty. I tried their jumbo cup lemon wintermelon tea, it is very refreshing for the hot pot. This time, I also ordered the four flavored broth. This included medium spicy beef tallow, tomato, mushroom broth, sweet & sour. The medium spicy beef tallow and the mushroom broth were the best, tomato was fine, strong tomato flavor, sweet & sour did not have much flavor. I do wish we could customize the four broths. Overall, the ingredients for hot pot here is good quality and you can find items for hot pot you don't generally find elsewhere.

Miranda L.

My friend had been wanting to try their hot pot for a while and it was a great experience. The wait does get very long on the weekend so we stopped by at around 12 pm to put our name down for our party of 2 and it took about an hour for us to get seated. They have a device that they hand you where you can order the different items and it was all a la carte. We opted for a split soup where half was a spicier and the other a golden chicken broth. The chicken broth really surprised us, it was so rich in depth of flavor and so comforting. We opted for around 5 - 6 items for the 2 of us and it was a decent amount of food. The beef we ordered was a good portion for 10 dollars, so soft and high quality as well. Some other items we ordered include the enoki mushroom, braised tofu, crown daisy, pork feet and mashed shrimp. The braised tofu stood out to me from the airy chewy texture and it soaked up the broth very well. Alongside the sauce station, they also had a soft serve machine for dessert. Overall, we thoroughly enjoyed our experience from the rich broth to the high quality and interesting variety of options.

May L.

A friend invited me to lunch at Dynasty BBQ in the same plaza but it turned out they don't open for lunch. So, we decided to give this place a try instead. We were the first group to arrive when they opened at 11:30 a.m. and were greeted by a tall, friendly server. He wore a mask but you could clearly see his attractive eyes. The server asked if we had been there before and when we said no, he explained how to order. We placed our order and the food came out quickly. We ordered both the tomato broth and the spicy broth. We were told that their mild spicy level is equivalent to a medium spicy level at most other places. It was definitely spicier than what I've had elsewhere, but I liked it. We ordered a plate of lamb, a plate of fatty beef and several other dishes. The quality of the beef was good enough that we ordered another plate. Everything was good except for the pork kidney, which I wouldn't recommend. Other than that, everything was enjoyable. We also ordered their iced lemon tea. If you check in on Instagram or Little Red Book, you can get a huge cup of iced lemon tea for just $1. The place is cute and interesting, with lots of fun writing and decor throughout. There's a sauce and condiment station where you can help yourself to sauces, fruit, and fried peanuts. Since the restaurant is located in a plaza, parking is not an issue. I'll definitely come back when I'm in the area.

Pranathi B.

I had this place on my bookmarks for a long time mostly because I was intrigued by the almost perfect rating. What I learnt over the years of visiting numerous restaurants with almost perfect rating was that these places normally tend to incentivize people to write reviews in exchange for something. I try to go through the menu before hand to ensure I have some options as I eat only certain seafoods and chicken. But, I didn't find any menu details on Yelp. I still decided to take a chance and visit. Thankfully they have a Yelp waitlist. I got onto the waitlist and was 54th in line with a wait time of 1.5-2 hours. I was at the restaurant when I was 5th in line and was told my wait time would be 30 mins more!!! Talk about popularity! Restaurant has an amazing vibe, felt like stepping into some restaurant in China. I was excited but felt like a fish out of water. And felt even more out of place after I saw the entire menu bar with instructions in Chinese. There was a placard on each table, it was completely in Chinese but I could make it was about getting a free drink in exchange for reviews. We got mini iPads to place an order and thankfully there was an English translation for each item. I ordered every item I could eat which wasn't many. For others benefit, I took a lot of pictures of their menu to post on Yelp. We got mushroom and chicken broth. The mushroom broth was richly flavored and was umami rich. The chicken broth felt flat. We were forced to visit the menu bar to load up on condiments to flavor the broth. We got noodles, tofu, mushrooms, bay corn to cook in the broth. For sides we got fried rice and fried chicken. The quantities of the sides were tiny. The chicken dish had a soft bone specified next to it. I assumed some of the pieces would have bones but to my dismay the entire dish was only soft bone with barely much meat. Totally my fault for the wrong assumption I guess. The fried rice was decent but nothing extraordinary. I wanted to drink the soup but couldn't find any spoons around. I asked the waiter for help and he got some plastic spoons for the hot soup. I asked him for some steel spoons and was told they only have plastic. This was disappointing as I couldn't imagine using plastic for piping hot soup. Overall we had a disappointing experience due to lack of options for someone with our food restrictions. We have been to numerous other hot pot places all over the bayarea and absolutely love Haidilao as well. This place felt exclusive only to a certain set of clientele be it with the menu options or the lack of instructions in English.

The restaurant was clean, comfortable, and had a lively atmosphere. If you enjoy authentic Chinese hot pot with excellent service, I highly recommend this place. I will definitely come back again! Authentic Si Chuan hot. good to try

Ethel C.

I believe the crazy waiting times have gotten better, came here promptly a minute after they opened on Friday (5pm) and the line had maybe 7 small parties and we all got sat. Then the line grew insanely after that. If caught up in that gap- highly recommend using the yelp/google waitlist. Definitely had the super good Chinese service (that one gets when in Asia), waiter efficiently explained how the ordering iPad thing worked, showed us the super expansive condiment station which also had fruits and little refreshing dessert things. I struggled with the water jug and immediately got helped. I like spicy food and thought the second spiciest level was actually not that crazy, pretty mild compared to when everything was just burning when in Chongqing eating a normal level spicy hotpot (hope that helps you gauge). It might be because I also had a split non spicy stock base which probably helped. The ingredients were crazy fresh, which is good cause they offer the more unique/more difficult to prepare/clean stuff. I wouldn't get the purple/yellow noodles- they don't taste different and are just meh. Broad transparent potato noodles are awesome/must have. Don't forget their soft serve! It comes out really fast so watch out.

Natalie T.

FORGET HAIDILAO AND BRING YOUR GANG TO FENG!! I cannot recommend this place enough, my all time favorite Chinese hot pot in the bay no cap. The moment you walk into this restaurant, you are truly transported to China and it just smells so good in here. They have authentic side dishes as well if you are feeling adventurous, man everything is just so delicious. I always get the 4 pot so I can get the best of both worlds. I love dipping my meat in the beef tallow for the spice (make sure to get mild because even mild is super spicy) and my vegetables in the other soups for a lighter taste. They have a self serve sauce station and some other goodies on top, I've noticed from the many visits I've made that the food offered at this station changes and it's not always the same every time you come. Also my little hack is to get the chili powder and add it to my rice, it makes it tastes so much better The tables are huge and great for bringing a crew here because you can order lots of meat and side orders and it all just fits, perfect for family style. I love to sip my soup and they don't give out spoons, so either ask or get the plastic ones by the ice cream machine. Also you can get a bucket of tea for a good price, and let me tell you this bucket is freaking huge, it's sometimes hard for me to finish it in one sitting. TIP: put your name on the waitlist via yelp, because they get super busy and even close the waitlist even with an hour or 2 left till closing. And obviously come hungry

Crystalin B.

I was so impressed with this place! The vibe was lively and nicely decorated. It didn't feel like I was at a regular hot spot restaurant in the Bay Area. Before our table was ready they had us order our soup and food on the iPad which I loved - very efficient. When we got sat at our table we got our soup pretty much got right away. We got the chicken soup and one of the spicy soups which was super flavorful. What I thought was interesting and stood out to me was the tenderized raw meats. It was so good after cooking it in the soup. We also got one of the bucket of fruit tea and it was perfect after having a little spice from our meal. I would love to come back and try more of their menu.

Holly H.

So spicy! I got the mild but it felt like medium+ (and I regularly eat spicy food). Even at this level of spicy, my stomach was feeling it the next day (the true measure for me on how spicy something is). Solid place, would definitely want to come back when I'm craving spicy hotpot. Wait was pretty long (1 hour and a half) on a weekend so get on the waitlist ASAP. Items are ordered à la carte on a tablet and sauce bar is a separate charge (I didn't get this but looked like there was soft serve available which might have helped with the spice!).

Alice C.

This place gets super busy so I would suggest getting on the waitlist at 4pm. We got on the waitlist around ~530pm and didn't get seated until 7pm. The waitlist is insane for a reason - this is one of the best hotpot places in the bay. First of all, I liked that you get to choose 4 soup bases instead of 2 like most places make you choose. Very flavorful soups, meat quality is good, the fried rice we ordered was good, and tastes authentic. Service is also excellent despite it being super busy - waiters delivered our items pretty fast and were attentive to our needs. Since there's a long wait, there's also a little arcade game in the front for you to occupy yourself with while you wait which was fun!

Nancy P.

Excellent food and service. The ingredients are very fresh! We tried duck feet, duck intestine, shrimp paste, pork meatball, and beef slices. All were delicious but the shrimp paste was exceptionally fresh. It was very tender and bouncy! They have a huge selection of organ meats too if you're into that. We tried the pork bone broth and the spicy broth - both were very flavorful. I would rank this above Haidilao in terms of flavor.. I barely used my sauce because that's how much I enjoyed the soup! They also have great service but I noticed we had to wait quite a bit for the meats to come out. By the time the meat came out we ate most of everything else. But other than that I would highly recommend for all hot pot lovers :-). Come early to get seated without wait!