Shoo Loong Kan Hotpot — Restaurant in Chicago

Honest review (more details below) - more on @midwestmunching on Instagram

It's a chain, started in LA in 2019 and expanded to NY, Houston,& Chicago since then. This spot opened in December 2022 . Location in the entrance corner of old Chinatown

Few highlights ✅REALLY NICE BROTHS including tomato, pork bone, classic Sichuan chilli, and mushroom

✅QUALITY TYPES OF BEEF including high quality kobe, slice/dice wagyu, fatty, short rib, marbled (extra fatty), marinated, spicy, and crystal (ran out)

✅PLATTERS : Seafood ($22 / $40 ) and veggie platters ($12) to share and try different things

✅REALLY GOOD HANDPULLED NOODLES (we got 2) but they ran out of 刀削麵 （hand cut noodles) which are mine and my friends' favorite

✅APPETIZERS Amazing black pepper fried pork knuckles among a range of free appetizers in the beginning: fried peanuts, pickled radish, fries

Things to think about 😨 THE WAIT: They're very new, everyone is trying to go. While they have a wait-list function online which tells you if you are "next in line", we had a group of 6 and was "next in line" for 2 hours from 6pm then ate at 8:30. We ended up waiting for an hour just at the restaurant

😨THE SPREAD: some stuff are still missing and would run out like the our hand cut noodles, marbled beef. They have only 17 tables within the 3500 square foot space. Other hotpot places have 2-3x capacity bringing their food purchase to economies of scale. So it's certainly hard for this place to buy large quantities of stuff I think

This also includes the sauce - some things like sacha sauce, sesame oil are missing . That in addition to the selection of free desserts , they only had red bean soup.

😨 VEGETARIANS: our friend is a pescetarian and we needed to actively tell every single waiter to not add pork soup to the tomato broth in there and use water/veggie broth instead

Tldr; maybe wait a bit before you visit or find off...

If i could leave no stars i would. It was two of us dining in. The lady at the front desk was really rude, she was wearing what looked like a black blazer. Looks like she was in charge we sat at a table and she asked us if we knew how it worked we said yes. We started to order and she takes the tablet from my hand and tells us that we should order 2 broths instead of one i tried to tell her no, we only wanted one and we want it spicey she cut me off telling me and i quote "I know more then you, i work here". So we dont argue with her or nothing we go along with it and then she walks away so we continue to order other items that we may want, once we were done ordering she comes back when we have the food out and she insisted we didnt know how it works and grabbed our food and put it into the broth without asking if it was okay. We had told her already this wasnt our first time at a hot pot and we knew how it worked and she just insisted she was right we were wrong. So she asks us if we needed forks instead i guess we didnt look the type. So at this point we wanted to just get up and leave since it was already terrible customer service and terrible food. To begin with we didnt even try the other broth the lady had ordered us and the broth we did want didnt even have taste nor was it spicey. So i got a dipping sauce and i was charged double. Not sure how it works but it looks like i was charged more then 3 extra dollars. And once i had paid the bill the lady that brought us the bill told us to leave a tip. And she stood by the chair blocking the way for my boyfriend who was getting ready to leave. When she asked him to leave a tip i looked at him and told him not to because in my opinion you should only leave a tip if the service and food were enjoyed. And nothing from this...

Grabbed dinner here during the week and was quite underwhelmed. Had to get queued up online a couple hours before, and the system worked fine. Food quality was generally ok, and service was attentive. However, I found all the items here not as good as its competitor near 88 Market. Having been to that restaurant a few days before, I could tell almost everything—from the meat to the broths—aren’t as good here. I also think the items are pricier as well.

I also need to gripe about their sauce bar. While they only charge $3 pp, the waiters here come around with their tablets literally monitoring your table every minute or so. It makes for a very uncomfortable experience. I wasn’t impressed by the appetizers offered at the sauce bar, so I opted out while one of my friends at the table gave it a try. I saw the waiter promptly added the sauce bar to the tab (you can see it on the tablet at your table). At the end of the meal, one of the waiters added the sauce bar to the tab for everyone at the table. Did we dip our food into our friend’s sauce once or twice, yes. Did our friend grab more than one small bowl of sauce? No.

Anyhow, happy Chicago has another option for hot pot. It’s in a good location, but certainly not in my top 3 hotpot restaurant list in the area. Contrary to what other reviewers have said about this new place, it certainly is not the “best” hot pot in town in terms of quality or value. Qiao Lin for quality, Hai Di Lao for experience, and Happy Lamb for value. Those are the places I’d rather spend my money—there’s nothing here that makes me want to come back again beyond...