Hot Pot Hot Pot

Hot Pot Hot Pot Restaurant Review:

Hot pot has proven to be a growing trend in the San Gabriel Valley, with restaurateurs featuring regional variants of this Chinese tradition. In a Monterey Park strip mall, Hong Kong natives Barry Hin Chiang and Chi San Chiang preside over a modern space with wall-mounted photos of key ingredients, which all drop into a bifurcated tabletop hot pot. Hot Pot Hot Pot serves two different broths, a mild chicken broth, and a spicy red broth containing 36 different seasonings, including ginger, star anise and wolfberries. A massive checklist menu touts ingredients from the land, sea and air, some more challenging than others. You could easily play it safe and toss lean sliced lamb, crunchy Napa cabbage, baby bok choy and abalone mushrooms into the broth of your choice. However, for people who prefer to challenge their palates, pork stomach, kidney and intestines are all available, as are chewy red and white Hokkigai clams and cuttlefish dumplings. Regardless of what you choose, make sure to add house-made, spinach-stained noodles, which are firm and fettuccine-like. To drink, Hot Pot Hot Pot serves cooling, fruit-forward juices and smoothies, plus bottles of beer and wine.