Chong Qing YaoMei Hotpot — Restaurant in Pasadena

I took this locations suggestion from the reviews of the other HotPot location across the street. This is the only genuine HotPot you can get in the area. I’ll give it that.. Unfortunately though, we underestimated what it consisted of as the server explained it extremely briefly. Step 1: What soup stock do you want Step 2: Use phone app to choose your toppings. Me and my partner assumed it’d be small servings, but it’s very large portions, which is good under normal circumstances but we weren’t quite told what we were to expect so we ordered much more than we would’ve wanted. Not a huge deal but again, was our first time at a HotPot so it wasn’t incredibly instructional out the gate.. Why did I rate the service a 2 star? Well, while our first server was quite friendly, the second server kept adjusting our soup temperature, 4 times I counted. He mentioned that we should begin eating the spicy portion of the soup as if it keeps cooking the noodles wont be the best. While that’s fine, no one else was getting their soup temp adjusted so much, no one else was getting unwelcoming looks, and it seemed like that server in particular was aching for us to leave. And mind you i’m latino and my partner is white, everyone else around was asian—I CERTAINLY don’t want to make it a race situation, as I haven’t yet experienced that and feel that it wasn’t the intention, but god the bizarre nature of that server sure made it feel like one. Fine at the beginning, but at a certain point it felt like there was an odd spotlight on us. Around the middle to end of our eating experience, service, just felt bizarre. I didn’t walk away from the experience thinking; “wow the food was great, service was amazing, i need to come here again.” I walked away from it thinking, “the food was really good, but huh, that whole server thing felt…weird?” Atmosphere was fun at first, but then the music just stopped for about 20min so that was it’s own thing. Anyway, not trying to scare anyone off, just something I personally experienced. Also don’t order Mild soup if you can’t handle spice, that thing nearly burned my tongue off. My partners rating: 5/10 as a whole, 7/10 food.. Mine: 6/10 as a whole,...

tl;dr: this restaurant does not care about their customers and does not value their customers time. The food tastes bland, and the manager is just rude. I'm pretty sure they're in violation of some health and safety regulations. See pictures posted.

Review time: We arrived within ten minutes of our reservation but we were told our table was not ready yet. Ok, so our party of ten waited. And waited. And waited. All we got from the staff was, "the customers before us are almost done, but don't want to leave."

About forty minutes passed and the plot thickens. We found out that the party before us were seated only half an hour before our reservation. The restaurant was adamant that they don't take reservations after 6:30pm but we were not notified of this. So either they lied about the table before us almost finishing their dinner, or they are just throwing out company policies that were not made clear when we made the reservation. If we had known these policies before hand, we would not have wasted so much time waiting on a lie. Frankly, we believe they just wanted to make more money and don't care about their customers at all.

We tried making our point clear that 1) the whole point of us making a reservation was for us to get a table when we arrived, 2) we weren't told that they don't take reservations, to which we were met with a "fed-up" attitude from the manager.

This really just shows that they do not care about their customer and don't value their customers' time.

Eventually our party split was seated on separate tables and frankly the food was not that good. The hotpot broth was just spicy and was poorly seasoned. Overall, it was one of the worst dining experiences I have ever had.

In addition, I didn't not see a health and safety rating displayed in their facility but whatever it is, I rate it should be lower than what is current. One of their servers was on duty wearing slippers and another employee who works in the kitchen was wearing a tank top. You can see him pushing a cart as he comes out of the kitchen. Also, the platters they serve meat on has some sort of mold growing on it.

Think twice before you choose...

The best Hotpot I have ever had in Pasadena. It was my first time to dine here but it really impressed me a lot! Combo soup with medium spicy broth and pork broth is classic and tasty. If you are a spicy-lover, this will be the must-try for you. We ordered beef tongue, Beef Bone Marrow Zi Bu, Popcorn Fried PorkSpicy Beef, shrimp ball, green veggie, tofu, yam, mushroom and so on. All of them are very good but watercress and duck blood are especially highly recommended. As a person who loves duck blood so much, the item absolutely hit the spot. The texture was super smooth and tasty. Bravo! It’s my first time to have watercress and I have to say it’s way better than I expected. I will definitely come again for it. The dish is very special that I have barely seen this in other hotpot restaurants. The tiny bitter taste of the veggie suited really well with the pork broth that will make you wanna keep having another bite. We also tried the desserts, leeches and Zanba. They are our perfect ending for the meal. Overall, I will list Yaomei as one of my top hotpot restaurants in LA. The food was amazing for sure and their service was awesome that the food came out really fast and we felt being well taken care of by our server.

P.S. I saw that people complaining about parking in the reviews but there were a couple of street parking spots when we were there on Friday night and there was a huge parking structure near the restaurant with a distance of only 3 minutes by walk, which offer 90 minutes free parking with $5 flat rate per hour. I believe that parking is not a...