Happy Lamb Hot Pot, Dublin 快乐小羊 — Restaurant in Dublin

Solid AYCE hotpot place. Not fantastic, but you gotta set your expectations correctly for the east bay. They currently offer the basic menu for $20 (for lunch) and $29 (for dinner), and the premium menu for $36 (both dinner and lunch).

We got here on a cold Sunday night around 5:30pm and arrived at the same time as 2 other parties! Shortly afterwards, a huge line formed by the door. So certainly going earlier is better. They have an iPad at the front with Yelp waitlist -- sign your party up there since they seem to go by the waitlist even when the restaurant is not completely full.

General info: Tons of parking in the parking lot out front so no need to worry about that. However, this restaurant is not nearly as big as it needs to be, especially in the communal areas where people are getting food (especially because the entrance line ALSO forms around there if it's cold out and everyone wants to wait inside). Additionally, stands are put up next to each table to hold their meat, so you have to channel your inner temple run whenever you walk from your table to the self-serve area. It's not terrible, just slightly uncomfortable and you may have to wait a couple minutes to get your items.

Service: The service is polite and attentive (they asked us multiple times if we needed meat). Not terribly friendly, but that's not what I need from a hotpot restaurant.

Food: We always get the best of both worlds broth selection because we love the spicy broth flavor, but need to balance it out occasionally with the original.

The AYCE includes a decent amount of food included some cooked food like fried chicken, egg fried rice, etc. Lots of veggies and mushrooms too, and I love the quail eggs + all the different tofu options. They include marinated garlic beef in that area, so don't waste one of your 3 meat plate orders on that item.

The dessert area consisted of sesame balls (quite dry), fried mantou with condensed milk (not bad), and a soft serve ice cream machine with chocolate, mixed, and vanilla flavors. I got the mixed flavor and it was very icy. My husband said the vanilla was creamier.

We never got the premium meats so I'm not sure how that section pans out, but we've been happy with the meats we've gotten on the basic menu (we've only tried the beef, pork, and lamb). I would not advise getting the "special lamb bone" for the actual meat, because the meat consists of just whatever tiny flecks of meat didn't come off whenever they cooked it earlier. If you're just getting it to put in your soup for flavor,...

We were set to go to Shabu King (since our kids wanted individual hot pot) but they were closed due to power outage, so we ended up here, and we are so glad we did! I think it exceeded our expectations, since we really were looking for Chinese-style Hot Pot (Japanese-style, which Shabu King was, has lighter, less pungent flavors), and we were so happy we went to Happy Lamb! We were able to fit 9 people around their large round table (which held 3 hot pots), and we were really happy with the price and selection (all kids under 13 are half off!). The kids enjoyed the optional $1.99 add on of access to the dipping sauces, fruit, dessert, soft serve (the icy, cheap stuff) and soft drinks, but in the future the hot pot soup bases were so delicious, I don't think we would need the dipping sauces in the future (and would avoid the sugary sodas and bad ice cream). We did “save” the bad ice cream by putting it in root beer or orange soda, that made it taste a lot better. :)

The $20.99 per person option is available weekday lunches, otherwise, weekday dinners or weekends all day, the lowest tier option on the weekend is $28.99, so the weekday lunch option is really a great value! Amazing selection of additional veggies, mushrooms, different types of noodles, seafood, pork belly, as well as some freshly-cooked fried options (their chicken wings were SOOOO good! The gyozas were really impressive as well, so tasty they did not need any sauce), etc., and our favorite meat option out of the ordered meat was the hand-sliced beef short plate, since it had more marbling/fat and was the most tender.

As for the soup bases, we tried the original, sour and spicy cabbage, and the spicy versions, and they were all great! You can get a divided pot with half/half of any of the soup options (not just original and spicy) so it is very customizable. This is definitely THE place for Chinese hot pot newbies to try it out, since I think one of the harder things to figure out is what kind of dipping sauce to make for your cooked food (since usually the broth is pretty bland and you need the sauces), so since their broth is so tasty, there really is no need for dipping sauces. The staff were so helpful and nice, we will definitely be back again for other birthdays and...

Went here for a Yelp Elite Event. The Event will get its own review. I've never had Mongolian Hot Pot so the whole affair was new to me, my wife as well. We were seated with someone who was clearly knowledgeable about this cuisine so we ordered up and with chicken and vegan options they used a split pot even though we ordered all vegetable broth so we could cook the chicken separately. Cut to the chase, The food items were obviously fresh, top quality and presented beautifully. just looking at the fungus plate alone was worth the price of a meal. and boy was there more to it than that. There was way more food than we could eat and the cooking our own meal at the table was a fun experience. Flavor for this type of dinner all comes from the broth and speaking for the veggie broth only, they have perfected it. Everyone else at the event were raving about the house staple broth which is prepared for hours using beef and pork marrow. Place matts with easy to follow instructions are at each seat. they have a wine short list, serve beer, sake, etc and make sake & soju cocktails.

If you are wondering why only 4 stars, I rated this on my full dining experience scale not the strip mall scale. A few minute rough edges but nothing to keep me from...