Happy Lamb Hot Pot | Mountain View — Restaurant in Mountain View

Not the best hot pot ever.

Feels like they nickel and dime you on everything. It doesn't even come with rice or any veggies. Most non-AYCE hot pot comes with some base amount of veggies and rice or noodles if not rice and noodles.

It's difficult to eat there as a couple since everything is extra. Makes it really hard to get all the accoutrements without ordering too much food for two. Plus all the platters are huge, so if you want more than one thing you're going to be saddled with a ton of leftovers.

Also not knowing how it works or having it explained at the beginning, we didn't order everything we needed right away, until we noticed we weren't getting vegetables, carbs, or other sides. I feel like now that I know I could have ordered more intelligently, but A., I shouldn't have to eat here more than once just to have the meal go as expected, and B., why would I even bother to come again after the first time didn't go right?

And don't tell me to just go to AYCE. I avoid AYCE on purpose because I don't like fighting the crowds of cheapskates and having my meat orders "throttled" to keep me from eating my fill.

The sauce bar has hardly anything on it but they charge per person. And don't tell me it's 'cuz you get sesame balls. Sesame balls are a dim sum item; it's an odd thing to have on a sauce bar (also they're a thing that should be enjoyed fresh and hot, not lukewarm and sitting out for god knows how long). They already have a whole selection of other sweets so it's just plain weird to offer them separately. Plus they waited until almost the end of service to put out more green onion and cilantro. I expect an additional fee bar to have more choices and not have various buckets go unfilled for an hour. I'd rather they get rid of the sauce bar entirely, put the sesame balls on the dessert menu, and only let you choose 1 or 2 sauces/toppings per person than that fiasco.

They don't have my favorite sauce or soup bases. All the soup bases have medicinal herbs in it which are not my thing; even taking care to order a soup base that did not mention any medicinal ingredients I still got a medicinal soup base. And the mushroom soup base was 99% king and had literally half a shiitake in the whole thing.

The lamb rosette was frozen and stuck into a bed of ice and took half the meal to thaw enough to separate into slices to cook them. The meat seems "fresh" enough (considering it has to be frozen) but that's not enough to save it when the overall experience was lacking. Not to mention that fresh food should be a given, not a bonus.

The service was uneven. There was a lack of coordination among servers such that at the beginning we got asked repeatedly whether we had ordered but after that it was really hard to get someone's attention to get refills or even to order more food - which pads your tips, guys. I feel like I shouldn't have to...

Happy Lamb is a Chinese chain hot pot food restaurant so many of their items and the way it is presented is standardized. This is hot pot style so the ingredients you put in a pot are raw and with a broth of your choosing. You can check what you want on their paper menu and then show the waiters. This is a healthy and fresh place to eat especially in the colder weather - if you add the vegetable combo! 🥗

Share this meal with family and friends because it’s communal cooking and it’s more fun with at least 2 or more people. They have the originally bone marrow broth, a pickled golden spicy broth, a mushroom broth, super spicy broth etc. So first, choose a broth and then you choose the raw ingredients after. Choose a large combo where you can get either a thinly sliced beef, thinly sliced, lamb and beef, seafood, mushroom and tofu/vegetable etc. The combos are more fun because they have a variety of each item. This can be easily made vegetarian by only choosing mushroom and tofu/vegetable combo with noodles at the end. The ingredients here are always fresh.

There is a sauces station at the back, which is an extra price, but not too much. It’s actually quintessential to the hot pot experience - there are supposedly at least 6-9? sauces if you are truly “cultured and civilized” according to some. The food is nice accompanied by the plum juice on the menu. There are specific (more expensive) meat/seafood selections where they have intricate dragon or swan ice carvings as decoration and they use dry ice to make them more special. Kind of fun to order…

This hot pot originally was a Mongolian invention since the Mongols had to travel and eat on the run while they conquered other people. There are multiple incarnations of this idea that are Korean, Japanese (Shabu shabu) etc - but the sauces aren’t as numerous. Those have different styles and tastes.

If you want to eat this at home and love their broths, you can buy their pre made Happy Lamb sauces/products at the Asian supermarket. There’s also the original Little Sheep brand (with a cartoon sheep character) which the original owner sold and founded this one as an...

Overall: Tasty hot pot. We got: the original marrow broth [chicken + beef base, ginger, garlic, scallions, dates, black + white cardamom, angelica root, goji berries, and I noticed a few fermented black beans], natural marbled lamb, tiger prawn, veggie combo platter (which comes with napa cabbage, tong ho [which I knew as crown daisy], bok choy, pumpkin, and some red bell pepper), enoki mushrooms, sweet corn, udon noodles, and frozen tofu.

We forgot / weren't told how much comes with each item so this was a bit too much for a family of four with two kids, but we finished nearly all of it. I would say skipping the corn and tofu would've been a good amount. All the proteins and vegetables went really well with the tasty broth, and we didn't need sauces. We all had fun, one kid discovered that they really like enoki mushrooms, and I was very happy that tong ho was in the veggie combo.

Things to note: Everything is a la carte, including sauces. The servers didn't explain anything and the menu could use some additional details for a few items. If you've never done hot pot, or want to avoid under- or over-ordering, I would recommend just asking your server for details/clarifications.

Details: There is one burner per table, but they do have divided pots so you can choose two broths. Servers don't come by too frequently, but I noticed one standing nearby all the time, so I think it would've been very easy to ask for anything additional we needed. But you'll have to ask. The menu notes a few items as "recommended items" which was helpful, but it doesn't describe what's in the combo options, or note how big they are. So we winged it. The servers were all courteous, and after the fact, I realized that if we'd asked for details, I'm sure we would've gotten them. But it'd be nice if the menu just had the details for the combo options, or noted somewhere a rough estimate of how many items is the right amount for a given number of people. I would say you probably want to go with at least a group of four if you want a variety of proteins and vegetables...