Tan Yu Tou Spicy Hot Pot, San Gabriel, CA

After a LONG day at the REMIX car show in Irwindale, CA, I decided to meet up with Kchan, Kyosuke, and Mio for some dinner. We couldn't decide where to go at first until we ended up with Hot Pot.



Soups Boiling - (L) Spicy, (R) Ginger



Various Mix of Pots

Judgment: The restaurant was pretty simple. Just order whatever you felt like eating and they bring it to you. Although I had a little trouble because naturally, I wanted to just ask for everything in english but it appeared to me that the restaurant staff required me to speak mandarin to them so they could understand my requests. Even just filling water was questionable. The ingredients ranged a lot from fresh cuts of meat to freshly caught shrimp, all the way to stale and disgusting corn. The worst tasting thing that I had that evening that would've easily earned this place a 1 / 10 was the corn. It seemed as if it had been pre-cooked over and over until the point that the corn on the cob was rubbery and disgusting. Mio had questioned it because it was green in colour and I was thinking it was just a special breed of corn. The meats were fresh cut and you can see the quality in it. We had chosen beef and lamb as our ingredients. I was also unhappy about the portions of cabbage that we received. Typically when I have hot pot, they are in nice square pieces that are fairly large and you can fold and what not. The restaurant serves it in long strips and I did not enjoy that as much. Over all, I'd give this a 6 / 10 for quality of ingredients.

Conclusion: The restaurant is located in a tiny shopping center inside San Gabriel. There is expanded parking underneath the plaza, and for the super low cars like mine, you might want to stick to the over-ground parking. Mio had a slight laugh when we got down to the structure and my bumper went nose-first into the ground.

The Restaurant gets a C-rank.