Boiling Beijing — Restaurant in San Bruno

I love love love chinese food. It's my #1 favorite cuisine ever.

Going to this place made me realize how much I really love it. This place is specifically Beijing style dishes and traditional old fashioned chinese hot pot and definitely worth trying!

This place gave me the feels. I felt so at home since it has that old school chinese restaurant vibe. I don't know if it was the carpet floors or the wall decorations but this place just reminded me of childhood. The restaurant is decently large with plenty of large tables to accommodate families of 5 or more. Right in the front table, you can see all the beautiful pots that are intricately designed used for hot pot. You don't get one of these pots if you order hot pot but it's still cool to see how fancy they are.

THANK GOD FOR PICTURE MENUS. I'm a visual person so anytime there are pictures I am grateful. Almost all their signature dishes have pictures so you know what you're ordering. Their hot pot menu is separate from the menu book. There are so many dishes to choose from but we (my boyfriend and I) ultimately picked the lamb hot pot, sour cabbage and pork belly, beef pancake, and a side of rice.

The food came decently fast so we didn't have to wait long :)

Beef pancake: LAYERS. This pancake is layered with dough and beef. It was crispy, flavorful, and greasy deliciousness. I recommend dipping it in some chili and vinegar for added flavor but this was a great "appetizer".

Sour cabbage and Pork Belly: FAVORITE. This was easily my favorite dish. Cabbage never tasted soo good and it never hurts to add some pork belly ;) The flavor profile of this dish is amazing. It's got a hint of sour with the salty and savory works really well. It was to me the ultimate "umami" flavor. SO GOOD.

Lamb Hotpot: they didn't have the lamb ribs... so we settled for the hot pot. This place is known for their lamb so can't go here without getting something lamb. The lamb was tender and sweet. The meat would just slide off the bone. And It really flavored the broth it was in.

Overall, their dishes were spot on and would come back here all the time if I...

I ALWAYS come here for peking duck. Birthdays, chinese new year, anniversary, you call it. I’m surprised I haven’t left reviewed yet! Being here so many times, let me be really honest: I love this for peking duck. But for other dishes, I have not yet found anything else that’s truly worth coming back. Most of the other dishes are either so bland, not great in ingredients composition, or the flavor is just off. Peking duck: always amazing. Great price, great portion, great flavor, great crepes, great condiments, great EVERYTHING! Worth coming back 100%. Beijing lotus root glutinous rice with osmanthus date sauce: one word: ew. We ordered this because our Chinese friend loves it, but even she said it’s not cooked correctly. It tastes weird. Black pepper angus beef with garlic: it was ok, but a tad saucy and beef is tough. Braised eggplant with shredded pork: this is so gross, heavily sauced but not great flavor. Wonton soup: very, very bland. Meat is dry even though it’s inside a soup. Walnut shrimp: the only acceptable dishes. Perfectly fried, seasoned, but walnut is still somewhat frozen. Sautéed shredded pork with bean curd shin: this is ok, I like the wok hei flavor on this. But wish this has a little more flavor to it. Bland! Hunan stir fried beef: this is VERY spicy it’s insane. I love spicy and can handle spicy but even this one is almost too much. Imagine for the non-asian audience. Mongolian lamb: ok this is insane. We barely see the lamb, only onions. It’s more like mongolian onions!!

Despite all that, I still love their specialty, will be coming back only for...

Downright awful AWFUL service. Might as well be a take-out only restaurant with their attitude.

I went there at lunch with with a friend and as we were asking for to-go boxes near end of the meal, while the waiter was taking away the plates, he slipped and spilled an entire giant bowl of duck soup on me and several of our dishes. Luckily, since it was near the end of our meal, the soup wasn’t that hot but it did completely soak my pants and shoes. I told the waiter I was fine and asked for the check. I was expecting maybe at least a few dishes taken off the check or a discount but no, I got slapped with the full bill.

A bit ticked off, I asked the waiter if spilling an entire bowl of soup on a customer warrants some sort of compensation, she said that they had no one with that kind of authority working there right now but she’ll try to call the owner. After a whole 30 minutes of trying to call the owner, she came back with a “Sorry, we just can’t reach the owner right now and there’s no one that can make approve a discount.”

I found this incredulous. How the hell does this restaurant run properly without a store manager or at least someone who can call the shots when these situations happen?

Suppose the soup that was spilled on me was boiling hot and I got sent to the hospital, are all the restaurant employees going to still be standing around twiddling their thumbs saying that they don’t have anyone with authority around here?

In the end, “somehow” they were able to approve a $50% discount on the whole bill. After about 45 minutes of just waiting for them to...