Happy AYCE Hot Pot 开心火锅 — Restaurant in Rosemead

TL;DR - Food was bland/not good, barely any ACTUAL dim sum, and our overall experience was awful. Save your time and money and go to more established dim sum places.

So you saw the unlimited dim sum video for $12.95 TikTok/Reel. Same. My friends and I are all foodies so came to check it out. We were early and waited outside for before they opened as a line started to form in front of the restaurant. They ended up opening the doors around 7:05 - 7:10. It's hard to wake up super early and open up shop. I get it. So I'll let that slide. But as soon as you enter, you're hit with this overwhelming smell of bleach - much worse than hospitals. As they seated us, they said we had to pay before we sat down. Weekend prices are $15.95. Sure, no problem. We paid including tip and tax and we sat down at our table. It came out to roughly $20/person. As we sat down, we saw a worker going to the front refrigerator by the entrance to get two Ziploc bags of dumplings. Weird. But ok. We thought that they were going to come with carts like regular dim sum places but nope. There was none of that. Those silver dim sum bowls that we usually see from other dim sum places (and in the video) were nonexistent. It was all buffet style and it honestly seemed like they were trying to get everyone full with the fried rice, the egg noodles/chow mein, the egg rolls, and tea eggs. If we didn't have our friend who spoke/understood Chinese, we would never have known to wait in the long buffet line either. We all decided to wait in the buffet line and at least get SOME food. Honestly, the food wasn't good either. It was extremely bland and there wasn't even any soy sauce or hot mustard or chili oil on any of the tables to help with the flavor. (If you wanted Sriracha, you have to pay for the whole bottle before you can use it btw lol) As more and more people were entering the restaurant and as the line for the buffet/food was getting longer, the dumplings/dim sun STILL didn't come out. It would take roughly 5-10 minutes for any of the siu mai or fun guo to come out. They didn't even have the classic staples of dim sum (har gow, no mai gai, xlb, cheong fun, etc). And by then, the people in front of the line would have taken the majority of the actual dim sum/dumplings so it was back to more waiting. After a certain point, a woman with a giant silver bowl of dumplings came out and started portion controlling the dumplings with a rice scoop to one dumpling a person. And at that point, my friends and I said this is ridiculous and ended up leaving. We even contemplated going to a different nearby dim sum place in Diamond Bar cause we were already in Rosemead. Overall, do NOT come here for the dim sum. It is NOT worth it. The "owner" is replying to all the reviews saying that the issues have been addressed and things are better, but lol. No, it's not. This promotion has been going on for a week and there have been absolutely NO changes to anything. If they have, all these one star reviews would not be saying the same thing. It seems like this whole thing a quick cash grab and/or they didn't realize that their TikTok/Reel would go viral the way it did. Regardless, they should have learned from the first few days and made improvements to the overall processes and the overall experience. But nope. Even though this was my first time here, I wouldn't even come here for the hot pot either. Save your time and money and go to more established...

A lot of ad hoc stuff. Consistent service:no way. Good food: if it comes. Visited during off hours at a weekend 2pm but still waited for about 20 min. Staff need to focus on specific duty. Everyone is doing everything then either duplicate effort (I got triple plates of order at the very end) or usually nothing gets done (someone else could do it/someone else is on it, not me). Key bottleneck is lack of bus staff cleaning tables. People left and table not cleaned and made available creating stupid wait up front. Definitely need a dedicated host for crowd control. People just pile in at the front. I can see fights break out on a busy night. You will never see me there. Parking is also a huge problem. Spill over to park at the city rec center. Food was good if you could find someone to order it and then another someone to bring it over. The bell on the table is part of the decor. Never got any attention. Meanwhile the side dishes were madness. No plates, no clean up, glad you can heat it up/cook it before eating any of it. The ready to eat section was happily completely empty so no temptation for me nor could I comment. Bits of fried whatever we're the only sign there was food The included drinks were very watered down. The way it was made available and from the presentation, I didn't drink a zip of water despite the tasty but salty soup base and the salty marinaded beef that I ordered? It was placed on my table and I cooked it and ate it. Not bad. Watching how the staff cleaned the table brought me back decades. Scraps were swept off the table onto the floor. In a few months this place wouldn't survive a health inspection from things that this would breed. Put on the blinders otherwise it's great for $20. 6 or more mandatory 18% tips. Meat quality on par. Not much to talk about. Check out the pix already posted by others. Just imagine it was raided by a crowd and that's the conclusion on the food bar. Seating was not comfortable for the super cramp spacing. ADA will have a field day! My table was small so I bus everything myself, when the plates emptied, to a nearby cart. I got my own napkins, utensils, (ladle, chopsticks, starter plates) by raiding various locations like near the kitchen entrance from the dining room and the staff stations- multiple to get all the stuff. Water was diy but then being an ahole I guess, I wasted the 5 gallons to wash the glass... Didn't touch it for failing to make the grade.

So go for the food/$ and nothing else. I doubt going there again beyond the promotion period. Hunger and long wait time don't mix.

Update-2022Nov Management got a grip and things are looking better. Food placement was better organized probably from better staffing. Food trays were frequently refilled. Soda fountain dispensing soda. Meat orders came at regular intervals. Bus staff clean up all the stuff instead of throwing it in the floor.

Hope I was just drunk with a full belly of food.. I saw the age old problem of people skipping the check-in line and waiting at the table and took the table as soon as the current customer leaves. This was rampant back in the dimsum heyday so I stopped going to those restaurants. I hope I was just imagining it but it was literally in...

Review of AYCE dimsum (2/1/24): Dimsum is from 7am-1030am. Noticed the business name changed. I've been here a few times and never experienced any issues until this day. It was my first time eating dimsum here. I felt really bad for the overwhelmed workers who tried their best to run the show without the manager present or aware of the situation. They should not have sat all customers when one of the steamers went down and only had 2 servers working; the place was packed. I'm sure their mindset was to try to serve everyone like how they do during hotpot. This was their first blunder.

Our table was given away when we went to get hot food. After they sat us again, the patron at the next table told us to grab the food from the server or we would get nothing. I did that, but there were too many people crowding the server with the cart. Then, I was told to wait by the kitchen to grab first. The staff changed protocol and started taking the plates to the tables who had been waiting first. The patron next to us were nice to give us one of their plates because they felt bad we still did not get any dimsum. Eventually, we got some more dimsum. The quality of their dimsum was not the greatest. Most of it was like the equivalent to frozen dimsum you can buy from the market. I should've expected this...for $13. Too bad they don't serve you hot tea at the table, which would've helped them buy some time. The morning felt more like AYCE hot food at this point. The hot food was ok. There were fried rice, noodles, eggrolls, tea eggs, etc. Their winter melon drink was good like usual. They also had coffee, green tea, and I think (soy) milk, but they ran out. These were in self-serve dispensers.

The manager finally came in, along with more staff, trying to resolve all the issues. The staff were very apologetic and gave us coupons trying to redeem themselves. You can tell they (especially the young male server) were trying their best to make things work. Overall, it was sad to watch, but a learning experience for management/business owners--"What to and not to do after advertising a great deal on social media, and never assume the rain will stop customers from coming in."

Review of AYCE hotpot (7/2023): The venue doesn't look that big from the outside, but it is big inside. They have a hot food selection, which is pretty good, too. I loved the pot stickers and pancit. The hot pot soup flavors were ok. We got the house special (get this one) and spicy soup. The best part about coming here was the lamb (and lotus root). You need to try all the types of lamb on the menu. We didn't even touch the small selection of seafood. Don't forget to try the wintermelon drink. When they refill the container, it is gone within minutes. When we came, it was around 530pm, and there was a wait. When we got inside, it would take a while for the server to get to us, so try to order in advance by waiving the waiter down. They seemed to be shortstaffed, or that's how they run the business. Our waitress was running around so much.

There's like 3 hot places in a row outside. Every restaurant was packed with a waitlist. There's parking, but it fills up fast that we had to park in the...