Hero Hotpot — Restaurant in South Salt Lake

I used to consider myself as a regular here, the food is amazing. I usually go alone and the service is amazing, but this time I came with my family and the service left a bitter taste to me. After the hostess helped us to a table, it took a couple minutes for someone to help us with like ordering the broth (I didn’t want to just put it in because I’ve always seen the waiter/waitress do it, also it has all the prices and such on there), and it wasn’t until my mum asked for help. We ordered the broth and such, but when I went to go get sauce there just wasn’t any bowls in the area so I had just assumed they ran out but they never ended up putting any up. I asked the employee for some extra bowls too and they just seemed annoyed. In some ways, I also felt like everyone else was receiving much better and faster service than we were and I don’t want to say it’s because we are POC, but it’s kind of weird how a lot of the people in there were white, receiving fast friendly service, while we got the bare minimum (just a speculation though, I’m not accusing them of anything). They’d also forget about food we’d put into order, which usually is fine, but it would be items where it’s extra and when we were paying they rang it up for us to pay. I politely let the hostess know we didn’t get it and the issue got resolved but and she just seemed really annoyed, I understand there’s probably others who try to scam the restaurant out of paying extras but this just wasn’t the case. Sometimes i’m a bit too scared to stand up for myself, but the service we received this time was just awful and I couldn’t justify paying extra for something I didn’t received (keep in mind i still tipped). No one would check up on us, drinks weren’t ever refilled unless we got their attention to help us, and they just seemed annoyed when we would. Food was good as always but I’m just kind of sad by how unwelcomed we felt the entire time. I really don’t ask for much, to be seated, have someone help me with starting with the broth, and to be checked on at least once during the meal. This has been my favorite place to eat at for many years, I’ve never had any issues with food or service before, but I don’t think I’ll be going back again after...

This hot pot place is located in Chinatown Supermarket. As you walk by the supermarket, you can see inside because it is all glass and it is a nicely furnished, packed hot pot place. It kind of draws you in because you can see all of the people eating delicious hot pot and having a good time in a busy, bustling place. I think having it be an open shop was a great idea. Once you walk in, you are seated and asked to choose your drink and what kind of broth you would like.

Once they bring out the broth, you are ready to order. As you put in orders through the iPad, plates of meat come from the back straight to your table. I always order a non-spicy and spicy broth. I usually eat from the spicy side, but interchanging between the two is always nice. For meats, I enjoy all of the thinly sliced beef, lamb, etc. For non-meats, I love enoki mushrooms, cabbage, other veggies. I do like putting tofu skins and small rice cakes in my hot pot as well, I'm not sure if Hero Hot Pot has that, but if not, it would be a great addition.

Overall, I would give Hero Hot Pot a 4 or 5 stars. Everything is great and the service is fast and considerate. The reason for the 2 stars is that nearing the middle of our feasting, our iPad starting glitching. We would put orders in, but we would not see any plates of food come to our table. We waited for about 15-20 minutes and received nothing. Our server then came to our table and apologized. She was so helpful, she said to put in our order again and she'll check if it came in. For the rest of our dinner, we had to continue to ask her to check if it went in or not. Sometimes it would go through and other times it would not. It was very inconvenient and our broth started evaporating as we continued to wait for our meats. I would have put one star, but because of her service and her diligence, I'm grateful to her so 2 stars it is. I'm not sure what happened that night, but it looked like just our iPad was struggling to send orders in...

(I’m from Chicago and there have plenty hot pots options. My comment is compared with hot pot restaurants in Chicago)

I spent most of the time waiting for my food to come, watch the broth boiling, and have nothing to eat. This is all because the size of each order is small and the slowest serving (or, you might never get it - see below)

The broth is very plain and you can clearly see through the broth (see detail comments below); the winter melon is not fresh; the fried buns are too greasy; each order has very few foods and you can finish it in few minutes and wait ten minutes (or longer or never) for the next order; the serving is slow, waited ten minutes with no food served; ordered some foods but never served and then customers have to remind the staff; the fried beef balls taste bad; the fried tofu is delicious; the meat slides are ok but I was not able to eat enough because of the slowest serving… (imagine you can eat 10 but only get 3-4)

About the broth: I have never saw a broth like this before. It is too plain. It is like you get some broth from the true hot pot broth and add a bunch of water in it. The worst broth ever! And it has a unpleasant smell - this smell is usually because of the bone (or meat) is not prepared correctly

Remember for those who still want to try: if your food is not ready in 5 minutes, make sure to let the waitress/ waiter know!! Otherwise you may wait very long time to get it and possibly never get it. And ordering foods in advanced!! Otherwise you would just watch the broth boiling and no food to cook (for more than 10 mins or never get it until you ask the staff) Avoid the bone and tomato broth. You can do it much...