Yuan's Hotpot — Restaurant in Rosemead

Food: I ordered the crispy pork, beef belly, wagyu beef, mushroom combo, handmade pork meatball, angus ribeye, kung fu potato, wood ear mushroom, brown sugar rice cake, fish and house marinated chicken cartilage. I know, it is a lot for two but we were celebrating an anniversary! All the meats were so tender and my favorite was the beef belly that you could dip in egg before you cook it. I also loved their crispy pork which came with spices aside for you to dip. The spices were gave more of a numbing sensation than spicy. I got their signature spicy broth in medium and as someone who loves spicy food I think the heat level was really good. It is a bit numbing which I loved. I also had their bone broth which was quite flavorful as well. If you love spicy food but have a low tolerance, try little bit spicy. Drinks: We got the sparkling passionfruit. I loved the fizziness of the drink and would love to try to recreate it at home. Service: Staff was so kind and attentive. They asked if it was my first time here and explained where their snacks and dipping sauces were located. They also checked on us frequently asking if we needed anything or if we wanted more broth. Side notes: You scan a QR code at the table for the menu and they ask you if you want aprons in case of the oil splashing on you. There was plenty of parking. They take cash and card. You can take the leftovers home but everything must be cooked. They won’t let you take anything uncooked home so make sure you cook your meats if you want to take them home! Overall, I’d...

If you say Xiaolongkan, Lameizi, and Chunlahao are traditional hot pot places, then Yuan's is the fashionable style, both in renovation and decoration. Yuan's might be the high-end hot pot in Los Angeles.

The restaurant has private rooms with full-time waitstaff and serves free snacks that you would normally have to pick up at the dipping station in other hot pot restaurants. The free Sichuan pepper chicken feet were delicious, and the fried sesame balls were hot, crispy, and tasted good.

The food was not more expensive than other hot pot places. The specialty was their wagyu beef, which had better quality than others.

I don't remember whether they had the nine-block pot. What I saw looked like a Mercedes logo shape, so you could have three kinds of soup base - one especially for fish, one for wagyu, and one for everything else. The pot was funny, with a copper-colored tiger head on the side. I don't know if the direction the head pointed to meant anything.

Hot pot is just hot pot. As long as the raw ingredients are fresh enough, it will not be bad. Nowadays, the soup base is no longer a secret. Hot pot is one of the foods that requires the least cooking skills...

We were regulars to the restaurant but not anymore. It was Lunar new year so the restaurant had discounted red packets for each table. We gladly used the discount when we checked out and left a 15% tip of the total amount (which was the discounted final amount.)

Then the lady ( we believed she’s the owner or some sorts) gave us an attitude and asked us to change the tip amount as she thought it was too little. But honestly we gave the right amount of tip and she had no rights to force a higher tip, we only had 4 people at the table. And what’s the point of giving out discount if we customers have to make up of the discount by leaving more tips?

She asked us if her service was unpleasant therefore the low tips, and now we can firmly answer well because of her horrible attitude we shouldn’t have left any tips at all. Never coming back again. So freaking rude.

If you don’t want to give discounts to customers, nobody’s forcing you to. But doing business this way I just hope more hotpot’s coming to LA and Yuan’s go out...