Latao Hotpot and BBQ — Restaurant in Philadelphia

Updated again: Thank you for giving us a great experience last time. Everything is much better. Hope to see you again soon.

So today I gave the place a second try, and I’m totally disappointed. I came here the 1st time on Tuesday, arrived at 9:20 and the restaurant close at 10:45. So I figured we have an hour to eat and leave at 10:20. We all work in the service industry and we know, we wouldn’t come 30 mins before closing and be a pain because we know staffs are all tired from working all day. It was so obvious that all they wanted to do was to kick us out asap and not let us eat as we wanted. The waiter’s face expression was clearly unpleasant and made us feel very uncomfortable. Food took forever to come out and he forgot (or intentionally forgot) most of the items. He also waited until when we almost finished then told us something was sold out.

We came again today at the same time, 9:20, 1hr15 before they close, the same thing happened, waiting forever for something to come. I wanted to check if it was the kitchen that took that long so I asked one of the waiter to go make sure if we still have food coming, he came back and said no, then asked if we wanted to put anything in. I swear I saw our first waiter write down everything we said at the beginning.

I don’t know what kind of customers they have to deal with every day (maybe college kids in the area who don’ tip much) and if their jobs are too hard to handle but this is just so disturbing. I work at a restaurant and bar, I know how it is. But you can’t just treat 1st time customers like that, and the fact that do spend the money for food, we don’t eat for free, and we have the courtesy to tip (we could’ve chose not to, for how unpleasant we all felt) at least 18 or 20% each time. And I always tip 25% because, please, I’m an industry person, I make a living on tipping money, I know how it is.

The reason why I’m making this review is because I like the taste of the hotpot, and it’s actually a nice place. I do want to come back, but to be able to enjoy an actual dinner, not to try to think of how to deal with this kind of service so that we can get something in our mouth and pay for it. You get...

Is it true that they do not let you sit at the table if you are having BBQ and someone with you is having Hot Pot? To me, it makes no sense due to the fact that they have BBQ/HOT POT set ups at the table. So long story short. I bought my mother and sister here bc I’ve been here in the past, and thought that it’ll be a very nice treat for them to try. THE FOOD HAD ALWAYS BEEN AMAZING, and I’ve only just had hot pot never BBQ. But, when we walked in my mother wanted BBQ and my sister and I wanted Hot Pot . So when we told the guy that was working our section he basically told us that we had to separate and go to different tables because they didn’t want us to share food. Or order BOTH. Why would they even do that ? Their loss, bc we walked out after fighting with the guy about the situation and how it didn’t make sense . Ive been to multiple hot pots and was never treated in such a way , and we’ve always been able to do both at one table one person gets BBQ, while the other gets hot pot. It was very strange, but once again they lost out . Enjoy the review guys, I hope your visit is better...

Food 6/10 Great value, all you can eat hotpot. Do I feel great after? Not particularly. Each item for the hotpot had TINY servings, so we just had to keep on ordering. The broth had a really sad piece of bone with no marrow as the base. Everything just looked kind of sad. We got the hotpot kbbq combo all you can eat, and the meat was just super tough and sinewy for the kbbq. Also sucks that we have to cook it ourselves, but no matter how long or short we cooked the meat, it just tasted hard and almost unchewable. The shining light of the dinner were the flat glass noodles, love them always for hotpot.

Atmosphere 6/10 Not the most ventilated, our seats were for some reason not stable so when my friend sat up our couch/seat pushed back?? Great vibey Chinese songs though.

Service 4/10 They forgot some things we ordered, and again, did not provide any help with cooking the kbbq, which...