Hot Pot Chinese Restaurant — Restaurant in Prince Frederick

We're always looking for a good Chinese restaurant near us and have yet to find one. I really wanted to post a happy rave review. We tried Hot Pot based on the google reviews. Too late, I realized most of the good reviews were over a year old. We got Spicy Tangy Dumpling Szechuan Style (based on a rave review), Moo Shu Chicken, Shrimp Egg Foo Young, and Hot and Spicy Bean Curd. None of it was good and some of it was truly horrible.

The "tangy" dumplings sauce tasted exactly like canned Spaghetti-Os (watered down ketchup) and the dumplings themselves were thick, rubbery and you needed a magnifying glass to find the rancid tasting meat.

The Moo Shu Chicken didn't taste fresh and the pancakes looked more like tortillas. The last time I ate moo shu was many years ago at a different restaurant and the pancakes were totally different (they were really good, these were not).

The Shrimp Egg Foo Young was mediocre and I didn't like the golden (too sweet) gravy that was thick and clumpy and probably came out of a can.

The Hot and Spicy Bean Curd was SO hot I couldn't eat it (and I specifically asked "not too hot please"). It looked like they used a half jar of crushed red pepper! The "bean curd" was tofu cut into cubes. I like abura-age style bean curd, which is pre-fried and has a lovely chewy texture. (Thai Inter Restaurant has the good kind of bean curd). I can make stir-fried tofu at home.

The side dishes, which we paid extra for instead of the white rice that comes with the meal: The brown, smelly fried rice was inedible. I hope my chickens will eat it. The lo mein was the only thing I liked.

We paid over $30 for this meal and we won't...

I've driven past Hot Pot more times than I could count, but it was too far from home to be a reasonable place to eat until a recent move. I finally got around to trying it last week, and couldn't have been more impressed. I did not dine in, but from what I could see the decor was your standard fair for a Chinese restaurant, but that's pretty irrelevant to me anyway since I got take out. The service was courteous and prompt from ordering to pick up, and the food itself was excellent. So far I have sampled their Egg Drop Soup, rice, Double Cooked Pork, Szechuan Style Dumplings, and, and Crispy Sesame Beef. The egg drop soup was tasty, but the least remarkable of the items that I've tried-- let's face it, it's hard to ruin this menu standard, and hard to make it anything other than "normal", so it was fine. Everything else has been exceptional though. The Double Cooked Pork was extremely tasty, with large pieces of tender pork and delicious cabbage with just the right amount of crunch. The Sesame Beef was cooked perfectly, good quality beef, and flavorful. The Szechuan Style Dumplings were simply outstanding. There are not your typical "pot sticker" type dumpling that every other Chinese restaurant has, but obviously freshly made dumplings, perfectly folded, stuffed with pork, and swimming in a wonderfully spicy red sauce. I don't think I'll ever want the typical dumpling again after trying theirs. I couldn't recommend them more highly- the dumplings and...

Decided to try Hot Pot Chinese Restaurant for the first time. It appears that they are only doing take out right now. The person whom took my order was friendly. I ordered the Cashew Chicken combo. Which consisted of entree fried vegetable rice and an egg roll. I paid for my food and was asked to wait in my vehicle and they would bring it to me. She brought my food and I took it home. When I opened the container, there was a nice amount of cashew chicken & fried rice. However there was no sauce and was very dry. Which made me wonder how they made it. As there was absolutely no visible sauce. Cashew chicken always has a sauce. The cashew chicken had a good taste but being it was so dry it was very hard to eat with the rice. It really needed sauce! The egg roll was good. I would have liked to have given them more stars, but they need to improve. I may give them another try at some point. However if they're reading this review I hope they will give more thought to making sure there is a tasty sauce with this cashew...