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

Dumpling Inn is the ultimate comfort food

Oh, how I love dumplings! They may be my favorite comfort food. And how amazing is it that they are becoming more commonplace in American cuisine? Finally, what took so long?

Dumpling Inn serves my favorite Xia Long Bao in San Diego. I realize saying this may cause a little controversy, I know there are a lot of Din Tai Fung lovers out there, so hear me out. I’ve been going to Dumpling Inn since well before it moved into this giant location with the Shanghai Saloon. If you’re local to San Diego and familiar with Convoy Street (where pretty much all of the amazing Asian food in San Diego resides), you may remember long ago when Dumpling Inn was located in what is now a little Boba Cafe in the left-corner of the shopping center where the current location resides. There were about 6 tables in the old location, and you would walk up and add your name to the list hanging from the door. Gaging by the number of names ahead of you would determine how many beers you would need to tailgate with in the parking lot as you impatiently waited for your turn. Ahh good times! My point to this little trip down memory lane, is that Dumpling Inn was the introduction to my love affair with Xia Long Bao. I absolutely love these morsels of love that burst with flavor (and soup) in your mouth. Along with the Xia Long Bao, the food here is consistently delicious, and there is really not a bad option on the menu — have you tried their fried rice? Best fried rice ever.

Long story long, here are some of my favorite options at Dumpling Inn:

Potstickers

Xia Long Bao (AKA Soup Dumplings, AKA Xiao Long Bao)

Pork and Chive Dumplings in Spicy Soup

Beef and Scallion

Sauteed Chinese Green

Not pictured is one of my favorite dishes - the Green Bean Fish with Black Bean sauce. It’s a fabulous and savory dish of flash fried sea bass with perfectly crunchy and bright green beans in one of the best black bean sauces I’ve had. It’s delightful and makes for some really tasty leftovers. Try it!

The potstickers are maybe just as exciting as the Xia Long Bao. They come out hot with a perfect seared crust on the bottom. they also make for some great leftovers if you don’t finish. Surprisingly, they travel well!

I highly recommend using the dipping sauces for your dumplings and be sure to ask for the spicy oil if it’s not on your table. I like to blend 2/3 soy sauce, 1/3 rice vinegar and add spicy oil + red chili flakes to your spice level of delight.

Warning: The Pork and Chive Dumplings (or choose any dumpling you like) with spicy soup is not for the faint of heart. It’s spicy, like the kind of spicy that gets ya if you inhale too quickly — unctuous and garlic-ey and delicious. This one will clear your sinuses and make your nose run, but it’s worth every savory and spicy bite!

A tip for devouring your Xia Long Bao is to scoop it onto your Chinese soup spoon, swoop some dipping sauce and take a bite — that way if the soup spills out of the dumpling it lands in the spoon and not the table. This is the suggested method for polite eaters that don’t want to gobble the whole dumpling down in one swift bite (I don’t really get how it’s possible, but for those that can actually restrain yourselves, give the spoon a go).

Dumpling Inn is one of my FAVORITE restaurants in San Diego, and is a fantastic spot for brunch or dinner, or your favorite sporting event. You can post up at the bar, munch on dumplings and your favorite craft beer and catch up on the game. I mean, does it get any better? I invite you to explore everything on the menu here, there is not a bad option, but don’t forget the dumplings!

Dumpling Inn

4625 Convoy Street

San Diego, CA 92111