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| - EDIT: It appears that the restaurant owners (or somebody else affiliated with the business) have taken to writing fake shill reviews in a pathetic attempt to manipulate their overall rating. Notice that all of the 5-star reviews are by users with only 1 or 2 reviews. They probably gave one another most of their useful/funny/cool votes. In fact, Gabrielle Y.'s original review was removed by the Yelp admin, but a new one was posted IMMEDIATELY (literally within a few minutes). I urge my fellow Yelpers to read everything carefully and decide for yourself which ones to trust.
My original review is below:
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Wow, I haven't been this disappointed in a long time. My fiancée and I had been excited about coming here since we first saw the signage outside last month, and we finally came today (a Saturday), around 11:30 AM. The first thing we noticed is how disorganized the place is; they were busy training a new employee and none of the others was dealing with the line of customers waiting to order. The place wasn't super busy, maybe a dozen people eating and 4 others in line ahead of us.
The way this place works: ingredients are separated into meats (which include fish, shrimp, etc.), vegetables, and "mixed meats" (fish balls and quail eggs). You tell them which ingredients you want, they put them all in a bowl, and cook in a soup with your broth of choice. Meats are $2 each, vegetables $1, mixed meats $1.50. While the concept is fine, the poor organization here means ordering is very inefficient. The staff are Chinese and so are we, but they didn't know the names of several items we asked for. I imagine it would be even more confusing for English speakers. They don't have a large quantity of the ingredients on the counter, so they are constantly running out of things and running to replace with a new batch. They also failed to keep track of what ingredients we ordered, and we had to help them add it up. All in all, ordering was a messy ordeal and I don't want to imagine how they handle the crowds during busier times.
Personally, I think they should let customers fill their own bowl and pay by weight (like most similar places in China), or a fixed price per bowl (like the Mongolian grill type places in America). By charging different prices for different ingredients they may be squeezing out better profit margins, but at the cost of poor operating efficiency. I also think they should call your number and have you pick up your order at the counter, rather than trying to bring it to your table, which they can't find and end up constantly calling out numbers anyways. At the very least, they should let customers get their own chopsticks, napkins, and cups of water - it's yet another extra burden on the already disorganized staff.
We asked for "slightly spicy" broth but what we got lit our mouths on fire. I don't know if they misheard or just don't have anything less spicy, but keep that in mind. They don't give you white rice, so make sure you order enough for the soup. My tongue was completely numb so I can't comment much about how the food tastes. But my fiancée had stomach cramps during the drive back home, and ended up getting sick.
Overall, it seems that the owners didn't do sufficient preparation before opening the restaurant. They should have had the staff properly trained and rethought their operation procedures. As of right now, the place is a complete mess, which is a bad sign for a place that just opened and should have had things planned out. I won't come back because of the food poisoning, but in any case I would urge them to consider adopting the self-serve model of several other nearby eateries (Spoon House, Sushi Ichiban, etc.). It would significantly speed things up while not adding to their costs.
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