Haidilao Hot Pot had me at dancing noodle!

Neighborhood: La Jolla, UTC Mall

Price: $$

Vibe: Lively and welcoming ambience, bustling with diners, dancing noodle dancers and kitty-cat robots zooming up and down the aisles. I suggest you make a reservation if you don’t want to wait – the line can get long in this hip location in the mall. Oh, and if you’re dining alone, they bring a giant stuffed plushie companion to sit in the booth with you, because who wants to eat hot pot alone?

Readers of this blog know that I absolutely LOVE hotpot. It’s spicy, it’s interactive, and you can customize it to your tummy’s delight. So, I was excited to try Haidilao, the new hot pot restaurant situated in the UTC mall in La Jolla, but I was also a little hesitant. Would this place live up to my “go to” hotpot joint, Little Sheep Mongolian HotPot?

Once seated inside, the staff provide a Haidilao-branded apron. Now, I typically wear dark clothing when I dine at hotpot because it’s soup and it drips due to my complete abandonment of decorum with the spicy soup, so the apron was a classy move from my perspective.

The menu is vast with a large variety of ingredients to choose from. Your party must first decide which broth to order. Due to the brilliantly designed vessel within the table, with up to four slots for your desired broths to bubble and froth, you are confronted with the ordeal of choosing between the eight options.

Here’s what we chose starting at the top-left and going clockwise:

• Spicy Pork Bone Soup - this one felt like the most traditional of the soup bases. Similar to other hot pot restaurants in the area, it had a deep and rich pork flavor with a nice level of spice.

• Miso Soup Base – this one had a yummy, deep umami flavor and I really liked how different it was from the other broths.

• Mushroom Soup Base – this one was a pure delight and probably my most-highly recommended broth option. The depth of mushroom flavor is unctuous, and I found myself choosing this one to fill my bowl repeatedly. Try it.

• Regular Mala Spicy Soup Base w/ Vegetable Oil – of the four broth options we tried, this one was the only one not meant to be eaten like a broth. It was a spicy, oil-based broth and I liked cooking the meats, noodles, and veggies in it, but then straining it out a bit before it landed in my personal bowl. It was spicy and delicious!

You must venture to the condiment bar during your visit — so many fun ways to customize your hotpot meal.

Haidilao Hot Pot provides just about any hotpot ingredient one could want from meats to seafood, noodles, vegetables, and the like, but their condiment bar (of which three are located throughout the space!) coaxes Western diners out of their comfort zones with bonito flakes, eggplant, a kaleidoscope of fungi, other pickled items. Though, in addition to the add-ons to the overall meal, one must, and I mean MUST, have the enticing feast for the eyes: The Dancing Noodle. Check out the video of the Dancing Noodle, freshly made and stretched right there at your table.

The meats we chose were the Angus Beef Ribeye, Kobe Beef Belly, Australian Lamb Shoulder (oh my!). Along with the Dancing Noodle, we also got an order of Udon noodles (my fave), Woodear mushrooms, Enoki mushrooms, spinach, Bok choy, Napa cabbage. The tables are designed to easily accommodate all your hotpot ingredients, without spilling out into the aisles or requiring additional tables like other hotpot restaurants. Brilliant!

If you’re lucky, you may get some of your ingredients delivered by the Kitty-cat robot zooming up and down the aisles, which adds to the zaniness of the experience.

You must absolutely try Haidilao Hot Pot. This place blew me away, not only with the wonderful food, but the bustling and lively atmosphere that makes for an incredibly fun meal. And who doesn’t love robot Kitty-cat servers and dancing noodle guys?

Haidilao Hot Pot

4545 La Jolla Village Drive, Suite F9

San Diego, CA 92122

Spicy City warms my spicy heart

Where spice dreams are made.

Neighborhood: Convoy Street, Kearny Mesa

Price: $$

Vibe: Tiny, busy Szechuan Chinese restaurant in a strip mall off Convoy Street. The mirrored wall can deceive you, the tables in this small space fill up fast. Plan accordingly.

I love restaurants with seasonal menus that evolve throughout the year, almost as much as I love restaurants like Spicy City, offering the favorites, the steadfast, tried-and-true dishes that I crave and think about often.

Spicy City is for spice lovers. Like for real. If you or your dining partner don’t like spice, either pass on Spicy City, or lean-in, let your nose run, and enjoy it in all its spicy glory.

Szechuan cuisine is a wonderful eating adventure, but the menu at places like Spicy City is vast and can be a bit overwhelming. I was happy to enjoy my first experience here with a friend who had been before and seemed to know every delicious dish on the menu. This very well could be because everything on the menu is fabulous. I do my best to branch out and try new things, but when I visit a place like Spicy City, I looking forward to my favorite dishes. Here are a few that I would consider my favorites at Spicy City.

Beef in Dried Pot

The Beef in Dried Pot is a wonderful stir fry of beef, spicy peppers and vegetables over fresh bean sprouts, steaming and simmering in the dried pot. It’s fabulous! Try it.

Shredded Pork with Baked Tofu (This may be my fave!)

The shredded pork with baked tofu sounds basic, but it’s a rush of flavor and textures that I find I want to keep eating, and I can’t really say if it’s the pork or the tofu that star in this dish, it’s kind of like a beautiful duet that you never knew you needed to eat!

Boiled Fish Filet in Hot Sauce

I know i said that the pork and tofu dish is my favorite, but I’ll be honest, the Boiled Fish in Hot Sauce is a favorite also. Mmmm how I love the spicy, oily sauce that this fish comes cooked in, it seems like it’s going to be too spicy to bear at first, but then you keep eating and enjoying and the next thing you know, you’ve cleaned the hot pot!

On this visit we also tried some fried dumplings and Chinese Greens. The dumplings were a little doughier than I’m used to, but let’s be honest, they’re dumplings and they are delicious.

Fried Dumplings

Chinese Greens in Garlic Sauce

I always love a good Chinese Greens. You really can’t go wrong with any of the Chinese veggies, but these cooked in garlic sauce were especially delicious.

Spicy City is an authentic, traditional and absolutely wonderful dining experience. You will overheat a little, you may sweat, but it’s all worth it for some of the most deliciously spicy offerings in the city. I’m grateful to have this as an eating option here in San Diego, I definitely feel that I should imbibe more often.

Spicy City

4690 Convoy Street, Suite 107

San Diego, Ca 92111

Buona Forchetta feels like home

Neighborhood: Liberty Station

Price: $$

Vibe: Lively and bustling (there is usually a wait, unless you eat in the bar), large, open-air restaurant with great seating options both inside and out on the patio.

My love and I don’t always agree on where to go out to dinner, but we can always agree on Buono Forchetta. Once this option gets put on the table, it’s rarely taken off. To get our pizza fix, we visit the Officine Buona Forchetta in the Liberty Station neighborhood of San Diego. It can get busy, but our favorite table to post up at is in the bar, which is open seating. There is a tall-boy table pinned between the two cooking stations - the pasta station and the pizza oven —and this is where the action is! Sitting here, one must pay attention to the servers flying in and out of the two open-air kitchens! If you can handle the bustle, it’s a fun spot to watch these amazing chefs do what they love.

The Officine Buona Forchetta restaurant always welcomes us like a warm hug. I’m not Italian, but this lively, family-style restaurant just feels like home. It’s casual, the staff are friendly and happy, and the food (the pizza in particular) is just phenomenal.

So is watching them make the pizza — tell me this isn’t just mesmerizing!

This visit, we managed to share a pizza, which is a rare occurrence as we typically do not align on which pizza to get! We tried a special pizza that had a little of everything that we liked. It was delicious, but let’s be honest, there is not a bad pizza option at Buona Forchetta!

Don’t pass up the Specials Menu - constantly evolving and offering new seasonal ingredients.

Lucia: Sausage, Artichokes, Arugula, Sundried Tomatoes, Truffle oil and Provola.

I really love their appetizers, but my favorite is the calamari. It’s quite possible that this is because of the homemade marinara that it’s served with, which is fresh and vibrant, just like Italy.

Calamari Fritti

I also adore their salads here. My favorite is the Fattore, a perfect accompaniment to your Buona Forchetta pie.

Fattore Salad: Mixed greens, grape tomatoes, walnuts and shaved parmigiano

The above video is a view from our favorite table in the house. I don’t know why but I always love sitting in or near the kitchen so I can watch the magic happen. There is nothing better than eating delicious food cooked by people who just love cooking it for you.

If you’re looking for some real good Neapolitan-style pizza, and a fun, lively atmosphere (who isn’t?), check out Buona Forchetta.

Officine Buona Forchetta

2865 Sims Road

San Diego, CA 92106

(Liberty Station)