Superhot Hot Pot & Korean BBQ — Restaurant in Mountain View

You can get hotpot and korean bbq at the same time here! I've tried a lot of items, here's some thoughts:

Korean bbq is pretty average in general. Don't expect super high quality meat, but it's definitely not bad. Out of the meat I've tried:

Galbi (short rib): run of the mill, standard quality meat, good marinade. Will hit the galbi spot but nothing special. Spicy lamb: surprisingly really good, and I don't even like lamb. The marinade is fantastic. Spicy beef: same marinade as the lamb, but for beef. Surprisingly bad given that the marinade is the same. Wagyu: strong "beefy" taste. Not extremely tender or anything, but good for your hot pot Pork belly: pretty meh, I wouldn't get it Steak: good, but no marinade so it just depends on what you like. The meat is thick and standard quality. Overcooks easily.

Their hotpot is decent. I've tried the shanghai borsch and pork bone herb bases, both are really nice and have great umami. Some standout items for me are:

handmade noodles: really thick, chewy, and long piece of noodle. I cook this for up to 20 minutes due to how thick it is, and by the end it's absorbed all the soup flavor but still remains chewy. Pretty good! seaweed kelp: if you like thick seaweed you will definitely like this. Surprised by the good quality of the seaweed. Fishball with roe: so good! Better than haidilao imo. Fish paste: really yummy fish paste, although quality has gone slightly down recently Fishball with meat: I personally do not like this at all. The meat inside has a super strange artificial aftertaste to it. veggies: in general all their veggies are pretty good quality. No wilted leaves or anything like that. I recommend all of them.

Now their dim sum is what I think really makes this place shine. They have such good quality dim sum, probably the best out of any hotpot type restaurant I've ever been in. Stand out items:

dumplings: these dumplings are legit. Clearly sealed by hand, and the filling is very umami. I recommend the 3 flavors and the lamb & zucchini one. crab cheese puff: if you like crab rangoon, this is literally the most elevated version of a crab rangoon I've ever had. You can actually see the stringy flesh of the crab meat in pastry, and it's fried to perfection. potstickers: surprisingly good. It has more of a thick skin and the bottom is super crunchy and crispy. pumpkin pancake: deceptive name, but this is basically a wonderful fried pumpkin mochi with red bean paste inside. The mochi is soft and gooey and the red bean paste is not oversweet. Probably one of my favorite items. Beef pancake: Pretty good if you like ground beef + scallion-ish pancake xiao long bao: These are more standard. Definitely not bad but I'd rather leave more stomach room for other things. Popcorn chicken: Better than at most hotpot places, but still not that good. Decent if you are really craving fried chicken. Scallion pancake: not that good imo, pretty dense. Fried bun with condense milk: really interesting texture on these, and really well fried. The bun itself is not too sweet. Worth a try, but not...

Was looking forward to the meal after a 40 minute wait to get seated, but restaurant was understaffed, and it took another 15 minutes before we even got our (individual) pots for hot pot. Some of the broths weren't very good, but they didn't let us try a different broth. Regardless of the number of people at the table, you can only put in 10 orders, so with our table of 6, each order wasn't really enough. Over the 90 minutes, we only managed to put in 5 orders, so each person got only 6 items, which wasn't enough to eat. At times, we were so hungry that we went to the sauce bar to get some raw eggs and throw them in the hot pot. In addition, some of the items we never received (at least 3), and a few times we had rancid tofu. Overall, the experience was very poor.

Food - Superhot spicy soup base was almost flavorless, just a bit of heat and salt. Pork bone soup was better.

New Zealand Lamb was good, and the other thin sliced meats (Wagyu beef, rib eye, brisket, pork belly) were all fine, but not thick enough to grill - they all burned and stuck to the grill.

Marinated meats (red wine lamb, spicy lamb) were more suited for the grill and were well received by the group.

Beef balls with pork filling instead had cheese filling, even though there is no beef ball with cheese filling on the menu. The beef ball itself was mediocre - quite tough. Fish balls with roe were alright, but the filling wasn't as flavorful and crunchy as I'd expect. The imitation crab stick was terrible, with no texture at all, just a solid tube of fish paste with little flavor.

Frozen tofu was pretty much what you'd expect, except three orders of our frozen tofu were rancid - a sour taste and mealy texture. Before that, we'd had a couple good orders of frozen tofu, so not sure what changed.

Napa cabbage and bok choy were fine, pretty much what you'd expect, except that the leaves were kind of small and the bok choy included the stalk, which one of my friends didn't like.

The best things on the menu (possibly because the portions were a bit bigger so we got to actually eat food) were the dim sum options. The fried bun with condensed milk was really good, and the chives pie was decent. The dumplings were all alright, though they seemed store-bought as opposed to handmade.

Overall, the food quality was good, but the portions were too small for everything except the dim sum (given that we had a table of 6 people), and some of the tofu...

Let me be very clear. You go to Superhot Hot Pot & Korean BBQ (SHPKB) for its "cheapness", and that is what you get for the food. You do not go to SHPKB to have a great meal or be impressed by the food. This is not a date spot. This is not for business meals. This is where you go when you are hungry with friends. Now with that cleared up:

The atmosphere plays along with the Supreme logo and branding. Love the effort the owner has put in there and has had fun with it. It can be a bit too much but for a joint that wants to be playful, this is totally in tune.

The service is fast. Perhaps too fast. Essentially, everything is pre-prepared and the servers are just bringing it out. They must have figured out a factory style kitchen (sort of like conveyor belt sushi).

The amount of appetizers and non-meat dishes are quite mind-blowing. There's a lot of variety. Some may taste good but none really hit it out of the park. Again, you go there for the cheap price and finger-food for the alcohol you're consuming.

The meat is the worst. You can tell that the parts are cheap slices, tough, dry, etc. But who cares. It's cheap right? And again, you are having fun drinking beer and soju with your friends.

The reason why I give it 2 stars is I believe the quality of the food has gone below what I think is acceptable. It's just a slap in your face saying "yes, I'm cheap, so what?" Yes, I understand once again that this is that type of a place - all-you-can-eat hotpot and BBQ for an insane price of $38 per head for dinner! I don't think you get that type of value anywhere else in the Bay Area. But I wouldn't return quite frankly. Also, I would think you want to keep the menu focused so that the kitchen can do a few things right. Not at SHPKB. You have Korean, Thai, Japanese, Chinese, and more all coming together in a random way. And none of them are great.

You leave the restaurant not feeling good, but just bloated badly. You feel like a badly fed pig, rather than...