东镇炭火铜锅 East Town Hot Pot — Restaurant in City of Industry

I came here with little expectations since the exterior and the name of the restaurant looked very generic. To my surprise, the interior is well decorated with a live singer performing, with many people waiting for a table to dine in.

If you were looking to eat in this restaurant, I would recommend calling in for a reservation or make one online, as the wait can be atrocious.

I've came here twice before writing this review and both times I've ordered the large meat sampler as shown in the photos. The set itself isn't too expensive, being around $30-40 if I recall correctly.

The soup base selected here were the Lamb Spine and the Seafood, which totalled another $30 or so, you can choose different bases for a different price, we just found that these soup base were pretty good and well worth the cost, given the additional food that comes with the soup base itself.

Outside of the hot pot meat, they have a snack/sauce bar for $2 per person. The sauce bar is decently equipped with whatever sauce you want to make, though they do run out of some condiments and don't refill it quick enough due to only 2-3 waitress running the entire restaurant.

The snack bar has an array of fruits (depends if they have time to refill) and some other Asian crackers or snacks, all under the $2 sauce bar fee.

Honestly the only negative I would have if the place is just the lack of service, but it was understandable given how short staffed they were both times. Not sure if the owner doesn't want to hire more staff or are they unable to hire, but if anything, it is commendable seeing 2-3 waitresses doing everything from taking orders, cleaning, taking food out, finalizing a table, and...

Last min trip that stayed open later than the others on a friday night around 10:30pm.

The servers were fast, friendly, and very accommodating. Came as a party of 4 and seated right away. Waitress suggested that we would need more room and moved us to a bigger table with a pitcher of water ready. You are provided with a QR code that directs you to their menu to place the order virtually straight to the kitchen. Once we clicked place order, the food was brought to our table in minutes.

Everything is a la cart. Ordered house/East Town soup base with the large tray of various meat, veggie platter, quail eggs, crab meat, fish ball filled with meat, sesame ball, 2 orders of rice, soju, 3L beer tower, and one soda. Portions are pretty generous. Love that they provided long chopsticks, which helped keep the soup from splashing on our hands or getting too close to the pot.

The large meat platter was a showstopper presentation. Definitely would come here again.

The atmosphere was clean, bright, and chill. With music playing, but not too loud, we were able to converse with each other.

The sauce station was a low but was enough for me to make a bowl, probably since it was close to closing time. There are fruits, snacks, and candy also near the sauce station.

I'd suggest providing at least 2 ladles for a party of 4 so that we wouldn't have to keep passing it back and forth.

In all, this place had good...

I have been there several times. I like it a lot in the beginning because the food quality is great but now, the food quality becomes really bad especially the meats when their business is getting better. Very disappointed. The food and soup base description is different from the actual food since they down grade the food quality and take out some expensive ingredients. So I am not going back there until they ethically run their business. Don’t go there unless you want to premium price on bad quality food.

10/17/2024 - After seeing your reply, I am very disappointed. I ordered two soup bases. One coconut chicken soup base and one Crucian Carp soup base. In coconut chicken soup, there is always coconut meat slices and last time when we went there, there is no coconut meat slices inside. I asked the waitress, and she said you guys took it out recently. Also in the crucian carp soup, I can't even find one single slice of fish and it was all chicken inside. If it's going to be all chicken, please put it as chicken soup base. don't mention anything about Crucian Carp. Also, I ordered the premium ribeye slices, but the quality was so bad. It's not even ribeye. Totally different from the first few times when I went there. I don't care it's standardized or not. I just hope you guys keep the standard but not lower the standard and...