Hot Pot Garden

Ayce hotpot and theres so much meat to choose from. Like this is my favourite place to eat ever. I always want to go and I’ll never say no.
Miso broth is my favourite and I only eat meat. Sorry but why wouldn’t I eat only meat? I like their little make-​your-​own-​sauce thing on the table. Theres like soy sauce or something and then minced garlic, cilantro/​parsley, green onions, and something else… like fish sauce or vinegar. Thats one of the reasons I prefer this place as opposed to shabu or other establishments. I AM MASTER OF MY MEAT DIPS.
Oh I also get their fresh ramen noodles. So good. Noodles and meat. Mmm.
Their snacks are good too! Their chicken wings are like really sexy. The crunch is different and I like it.
Theres also so much meat. Like lamb. And wagyu. And rib eye. And ugh. Im hungry now.

It was amazing, vast menu great service. They dont skimp on the meat and we were with the a big group of guys so you can imagine All You can Eat and Drink was pushed to the full limits. The Garden did not disapoint in anyway.
Cant wait until they open there doors as they have been closed for a renovation after a fire.
When you guys open please dont change your service, please be everything you were!!!

Got here at 730 on a Saturday night and had 12 groups ahead of us. But the line moved pretty quickly, and we were seated within 30 minutes.
— The good — The rib eye, lamb, and especially pork belly were all very good and sliced super thin. Cheap beer and sake.
— The not-​so-​good — The mala spicy soup base was pretty tame and barely had any true «mala» flavor.
Overall, still a very satisfying all-​you-​can-​eat meal

$ 28 for all you can eat hot pot! $ 38 for all you can eat plus all you can drink (beer, sake).
We came here with a group of 10 and sat at one of the larger tables with two pots. They have a ton of broths to choose from, and the pots are large, so I recommend you get the half and half for all of them. We got the spicy miso and spicy Mongolian broth — both were quite spicy.
The only downside here is that they limit you to 90 minutes from the time you set your butt down in the seat. It takes them about 15 – 20 minutes to bring out the broths and first serving of food.
The foods we got and that I recommend:
— wagyu beef
— beef rib eye
— pork belly
— shrimp on a stick
— lobster balls
— fish balls
— spinach
— napa cabbage
— white radish
— enoki mushrooms
Pro tip: Ladies night is tuesday night. Ladies get upgraded from AYCE to AYCE + drink for free. Yay!

THE WORST CUSTOMER SERVICE IVE EVER EXPERIENCED.
I came here with 7 other friends — the first time for all of us. We heard good things and wanted to check it out. The meat is really fresh and they give you a good selection of vegetables, seafood, noodles, and everything else you can think of. We ordered almost everything on the menu that had stars next to it (popular items). We all got the All You Can Eat and Drink. I would have enjoyed it if the girl servers weren’t so rude. By the way, the soju isn’t included for the alcohol which we didn’t mind.
Coming from someone who has worked at restaurants for years and served at bars — I don’t think it’s very hard to do your job and be polite to your customers. Off the bat, they were rude, unwelcoming and never checked up on us. We had to hunt down a server every single time we needed something. I don’t know if it’s because gratuity was already included so they didn’t give two shits but that’s no excuse to be rude and give attitude. Our soups ran out of broth and the hot pot started burning because no one came over to refill it. The server then came over and got mad at us for our hot pot burning which would have been avoided if she simply refilled it.
The one star is for the good food and I would love to come here again if they replace the servers with nicer ones. They would get a solid 4 if that was the case. What a shame! Come and try if you don’t mind bad customer service!

This place wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t amazing either.
The quality of meat isn’t that great which is expected from an all you can eat place. It was as if they cut the meat and left in in the freezer because they were all frozen together and it was hard to take off the plate.
Maybe it’s their way of trying to slow you down because it says you can order only 3 plates of meat at a time and you have a 90 minute period to eat here starting when the «first person sits down».
Had the Kurobuta pork, lamb, American Wagyu, rib eye and spam. The rib eye was the best out of those meats. (it wasn’t real spam, fyi)
The vegetables were pretty fresh. No wilted greens which is a plus.
The potato and sweet potato comes out cooked.
The spicy miso broth is really light and didn’t really taste like miso to me.
The Chinese Herbal broth was also pretty light tasting.
They have a LOT of TVs so that’s a plus if you’re into watching sports while eating.
$ 28 for AYCE
$ 38 for AYCED
Metered parking free after 6pm.

For my experience for eating around the Bay Area, this is a very bad customer service hot pot place, waitress had very bad attitude with «I don’t give a shit» face look when u asking about the wait. They don’t really like serve a whole family with kids because they think u hold up the seat and not eating much. The way they give out the seat was bullshit. The whole time was like, I m paying my dinner and taking ppl’s attitude, WTF!!! So TO ALL MY DEAR: if you wanna eating while taking ppl’s bad attitude (black face) go try it.
They act so cocky coz they thought they have business, but I m telling you. U are going to lose it if u serve customer like this.

Personally, I like having hot pot at home but $ 28/​person for AYCE? I can roll with that.
I was here for my baby cousin’s 2^nd birthday. They only do «walk-​in reservations» where you have to physically go in the day before to reserve it. We took up 2 big tables in the back; each table had two stove tops so we were able to choose 4 soup bases total (half/​half in each pot).
THE GET-AGAIN’s
american wagyu beef
pork belly
fresh shrimp (on a skewer so it didn’t shrivel up and get lost in the pot)
fish tofu
fish balls
lobster balls
fried fish balls
enoki
watercress
udon, udon, udon! Can eat this for daaays!
Even though we took a while to get started, we were beyond stuffed before reaching the 90 minute limit. Ordering new dishes was a breeze — the menu is laminated and you just mark your orders w/​a dry-​erase marker

I think it’s a decent place for ACYE hot pot.
Pros:
— Shrimp was fresh
— Meat is delicious
— split broths and delicious broths (I got the spicy monogolian and winter melon and I enjoyed both of them!
— I enjoyed the vermicelli, lobster ball, lamb, pork belly, wontons.
— easy ordering — you check off what you want on the card. A new card is placed on your table when your food is served.
Cons:
— servers sometimes forget items. I asked for tofu on the card and tofu was not brought out. They also gave us wrong items too. So servers are not the best when it comes to bringing the right items.
— Although there’s lots of items on the menu, there’s no rice noodles or beef balls, which are my favorite!
— One of the dumplings had a weird taste to it but the wonton is good.
Other notes:
–Only two credit cards for splitting.
–You can request how spicy you want the spicy broths — we regret our decision of mild. They are good with refilling the hot pot with the soup though.
— Parking is this area is easier than other parts of the city.

STUFF YOUR FACE
(4.25 stars)
It was like a Hot Pot Buffet. Seriously.
–FOOD, yum
–PRICES, fair
–SERVICE, strange
–AMBIANCE, spacious nice clean
All you can eat for $ 27.95 per person with a 1.5 sitting time. You sit, you order, you eat, you order, you eat, you order, you eat. Everytime you order they drop a new menu for you to mark. We ordered chicken meat everytime since it never came out AND STILL it never came out. You order endless meat which all look the same and taste the same. Sometimes I felt like it was pointless ordering off the menu and it’s like they brought whatever items to your table. AND sometimes we’d get double order of a single item we ordered. It’s clear there isn’t any organization with the waitstaff… But whatever you eat like a buffet here.
HEFER STATS.
The stuff the we boiled and entered my mouth…
— Spicy miso broth, yum
— Tonkatsu broth, yum
— pork belly, yum
— Wagyu beef, yum
— korabuta pork, yum
— spam, yum
— hotlink, yum
— beef rib eye, yum
— raw egg, yum
— salmon collar, meh
— halibut collar, meh
— shrimp, yum
— muscles, meh
— calamari, meh
— pork and leak dumpling, yum
— lobster balls, yum
— corn, yum
— napa cabbage, yum
— watercress, yum
— pea sprouts, omg yum!!!
— pumpkin, yum
— spinach, yum
— bakchoy, yum
— carrots, yum
— instant noodle, they ran out of fresh so we got top ramen noodles (lmfao)
Will I be back? HELL YAH!
JABA APPROVED. Until the next review…

My friends came out to visit me and they decided to go here for dinner. It wasn’t bad at all… but I’ll just like to add that it’s pretty pricey, then again we did all you can drink. From what I recall, it was about $ 40 per person. They ended up removing the all you can drink because we kept ordering soju which wasn’t included and it was cheaper that way… so yay great customer service in that sense!
Anyways, about the food. They had a lot of options which was cool, including the meat, broth, veggies, and etc. We opted for the tonkatsu and the spicy miso. I’m usually disappointed in the spicy miso base, but here it was really good and actually spicy. The tonkatsu broth was very bland in my opinion. I’d probably try a different broth when I go back. I highly recommend the place if you like hot pot!

Wait, wait, wait, and wait until your whole party arrives– place is usually packed so be prepared to wait.
Pick and choose what you from their menu simply by checking off items. Split pots for two broths, the spicy miso and chinese herbal broths were both tasty.
Then eat, eat, eat, and eat for 90 minutes. Beef, lamb, dumplings, enoki, fried chinese doughnut, udon, ramen, sweet potato, anything you can possibly name (and throw into a boiling pot to eat that will be delicious and edible) Hot Pot Garden will most likely have it. When you’re stuffed or your 90 minutes is up, the bill comes out to be $ 30 ish per person. Children over 3 years old are charged $ 12.95 each.
Waddle, waddle, waddle your way out and that’s what you call a MEAL-​DOWN.

I’ll start off by mentioning the service is top notch. They frequently check your table for water refills, broth refills, and menu orders. If you need something like chopsticks, napkins, etc, they’ll quickly go out of their way to give it to you. I felt there wasn’t a time where we need to flag down a server for something.
Soup base: You get to choose up to two soup broth. I opted for the herbal one and the tonkatsu. The herbal one is really good if you like drinking the broth at the end of the meal. Full of flavor and feels healthy with the herbs inside. Reminds me of a ginseng tea. The tonkatsu was a little bland so my suggestion is to mix it up and pick a spicy broth to compliment the herbal one or simply choose another broth that isn’t tonkatsu.
Meats: Kabuta pork, ribeye, kobe beef, and lamb were the 4 I chose. I felt the lamb and the kobe beef were the winners since lamb has a lot of taste (not too gamey) and the kobe beef is marblezed (is that even a word?). The sauce you make with satay sauce, sriracha, and cilantro easily offers taste to any meats you feel were unadequate.
Balls: Nothing much to report here since these are your typical frozen seafood or meatballs from your local 99 Ranch market.
Overall a great meal. If you are a beer drinker, there’s an AYCE + beer option. Most will probably just get AYCE though.

I love hot pot. I have rarely gone out to eat hot pot since we usually do it at home. Traditional Chinese households can attest to having the pot and heater thingy at home! The only other time I’ve actually ate out for hot pot is in Taiwan.
The wait was pretty long. It was close to an hour. That means they’re getting a lot of customers. I don’t see the hype. I heard that they’ve raised their prices too.
The price is pretty expensive. The service was quite terrible. We were squished right in the middle of the restaurant against a divider. Despite having many many waiters and waitresses walking by all the time, my flailing arm seems to blend in to the sea of people. There is a 90 minute time limit for eating, cannot confirm if they enforce this rule.
Incident report:
1. When we were seated, they asked what soup bases we wanted. We told them and they left. No soup ever came out for us, and nobody came to take our order slip for food.
2. 10 minutes later, we finally waived somebody down because of the 90 minute time limit. They again ask us what soup bases we wanted… uhh, we told somebody else! They were like oh okay, we’ll get that out. We attempted to give them our order slip, but they said hold on one sec and left without returning. They eventually returned with soup and took our order slip.
3. We were finishing up our food and wanted some more, so I waived my arm trying to get somebody to take another slip for us. Nope nope nope. I was getting frustrated, and my arm was getting tired.
4. This whole ordeal up to this point exceeded one hour already. We finally got our second plate of food. It shouldn’t take this long.
5. Finally, when we asked for the check, it took a really long time again. We were surprised at how expensive it was.
+1 for decent veggies and meats
+1 for decent soup bases
Overall, my experience was quite terrible. The food was okay, but the service was one of the worst I’ve ever experienced. Not coming back, and not recommended. It’s not worth the wait nor the money.

Let me preface this by saying that I’ve only ever had very traditional hot pot (i.e. chicken broth with various meats and veggies dipped in soy & chili sauces). The fact that this place offers so many broth options and condiments (minced garlic, ponzu sauce, cilantro, scallions, etc.) already exceeded my expectations.
What we ordered:
Soup Bases: (You can order 2 per pot)
1. Spicy Miso — my favorite! I like a medium spiciness and if you fish out the red chili peppers when it arrives, you’ll get a good kick without feeling like your tongue is on fire.
2. Tonkotsu — a good savory base for those who don’t like spice
Proteins: Wagyu (tender and thinly sliced — so dip in quickly and eat to avoid overcooking), eggs, shrimp (arrives whole and neatly skewered for easy cooking), fish fillets, chicken, rib eye, pork belly
Noodles: Vermicelli, udon, fresh ramen — if you wait till the end of the meal, your noodles will soak up all of the delicious flavors. The udon in spicy miso easily ranks as one of my favorite meal options in SF.
Veggies: corn, watercress
Net:
Food = 4.5 stars
Service = 4.5 stars — Prompt and very friendly
An easy 5.
Note: Though the space is pretty big, it gets packed quickly so factor in some wait time.

Had a nice dinner here with some family friends in town. For hot pot (which I generally prefer eating homecooked — my mom’s sauce is always the best), this is probably the best I’ve had in the Bay Area.
They’d already ordered a lot of stuff, and everything seemed fresh with quality ingredients. I remember getting:
Ribeye. lamb, fish balls (pic:
)
Shrimp, tofu, cabbage, vermicelli noodles, cuttlefish, tripe (pic:
)
Taro and egg (I believe) noodles (pic:
)
The taro seemed kind of old and in general I think is difficult to eat in hot pot — if you overcook it, it gets too soft and just tends to disintegrate when you pick it up. The egg noodles were fantastic — very soft, and I’m pretty sure fresh made in house.
You order everything at once by writing how many of each item you want on a single laminated sheet.
I liked that at the table they have scallions, cilantro, and a sort of dipping sauce by default. Ask for sesame paste, and you’re all set!
The spicy broth is SUPER spicy — legit stuff! I stuck mostly to the plain broth.

3.5 Stars
I wanted to try Hot Pot Garden and see what all the hype was about. With throngs of people constantly waiting for a table, we went early, right when they opened on Labor Day dinner at 5:45 pm. Got a table right away but the place was filled by 6 pm. Ordered the AYCE and had the Tonkatsu and the Mongolian broths. Here is the Good and Bad.
Good:
Nice décor
Lot’s of tables Large and Small
Counter service for singles
AYCE or Ala Carte.
AYCD all you can drink option
Check list menu
Meats (good quality, comes out quickly)
Service was good
Bad:
Location (Sunset area way outside of the main drag of San Francisco)
Street Parking not as bad as SF but still hard.
Seafood options limited variety small portions
Vegetables limited Variety and come in such small portions.
Ventilation is nonexistent so in the middle of a busy dinner clean air is a premium
Ugly:
3% Healthy San Francisco TAX added to bill (huh? What the Heck)
Crazy lines to get a table if you go at normal dinner hours.
This place is OK but other Hot Pot joints through out the Bay Area are just as good with out the trek, the parking problem and the tax.

Hey guys,
$ 25 buck for all you can eat is a good deal. The meat is good quality and they have tons of variety of food to choose from. Unlike little fat sheep AYCE is all the time. You pay a few dollars more but the variety is greater. If you don’t like or aren’t used to loud Cantonese places than you probably don’t want to come here. It is pretty crowded inside and loud so not really a great place for babies or kids. They also have a all you can drink option as well and those tables seem to get rowdy. I really like shabu house but for the price and the variety I think this is my new hot pot place.

We were in San Francisco and wanted to try something new. Hot Pot is the boiling version of Korean BBQ. Instead of you stir frying your food, you toss it in a boiling pot of «your choice broth.» It is all you can eat but the food is not worth $ 25 per person.
The restaurant opens at 5:30 PM. To avoid the rush, get there early. The ambiance is casual with loud music and tvs all over.
The experience is good if this is your first time. Unlike others, I’m the kind of person that likes my food brought to me already cooked and ready for me to chow down. Here, you start off with a soup based broth. You can choose at most 2 (ex: miso spicy, Vietnamese phở, Tom yum, etc). Then you order your meats. Like Korean BBQ, there are lots of different types of meats to choose from. From beef, to pork, chicken, to seafood. You also can get vegetables, rice and noodles to add to your pot.
After you place your order, they bring out a large pot with your two selected broths. Then you can start tossing in your meats. Tip: if you toss in noodles, make sure you don’t let it settle to the bottom of the pot. Ours started to have a burnt smell.
The verdict:
1. Food– okay. Food tastes the same because you cooked it yourself in the broth of your choice. 2 stars
2. Service– slow at times. Sometimes they forget to bring you items because you’ve marked a ton of stuff on the menu. 2 stars
3. Price– too expensive. First and last time. For $ 25, I can enjoy a nice cut of steak without having to cook it myself. For all you can eat, go somewhere else with more variety.
4. Environment– bathrooms are dirty and smelly. You smell like the broth because you’ve been sitting in front of it for an hour.
5. Concern: the fact that you continue to toss in uncooked meat into a pot of cooked meat.
Overall, different experience but not up to par with my taste buds and expensive.

FAN OF HP? NO, not Harry Potter (sorry HP fans). I MEANT HOT POT!!!
Ever wondered when a miracle would ever occur? WELL IT DID. I’ve been dying to try out HPG but always hesitated because normal pricing was around $ 25ish and with tax and tips, $ 32 I would assume?
HAALL to the LEEEHHH to the LUUUJAAAHH.
HEAVEN SENT PROMOTION
$ 19.99 EVERY TUESDAY!!! (dont know when it ends though…)
Come one, come all!
WAIT:
~it was about 45 minutes for my group of 4 people on a Tuesday night around 5:30pm. could possibly be due to the promo?
FOOD:
~various soup base, meat, veggies, dumpling, seafood, noodle, & dranksss selections
~hot pot is hot pot. I would say the quality isnt bad! However, halfway through our hot potting experience, the pot smelled burnt and the entire broth became oilier than an oil spill. SO we exchanged the pot and got a new one to begin hot potting again.
~Fav meats of mine were: rib eye beef, meat ball, and Kobe
~Fav veggies & Udon: Tofu, Spinach, Lettuce, Vermicelli, Udon
HOW THINGS WORK:
~ You get a white laminated slip and a dry erase marker (probably from Daiso haha) and you mark the quantity of selection you desire and give it to the waiter/​waitress and they bring it out.
~You get a choice of two soup base where it will be separated by a divider in a pot
SERVICE:
~ I honestly, despise unfriendly rude people. And truly, there are some here. We would ask for water and it never came so we had to ask another person halfway through our meal. And I can definitely feel when people look down on us because we seem like a bunch of kids to them. NOT COOL.
~Service was slow because there were a lot of people. Yes, I understand. But when we marked down our selection on the paper, they brought out the meats and veggies and NEVER our hot pot with soup base. We were left staring at raw meats for about 10 minutes until someone finally acknowledged our little dilemma as we constantly tried to get their attention.
My suggestion is, take advantage of their promo before it ends. I would not pay the regular price for this because the quality is good but the service pulls down most of my rating.