529 W. Valley Blvd.
San Gabriel, CA 91776
(626) 457-5111
11am-12pm
MC/VISA

GOOGLE MAP

Located in a strip mall at the North East Corner of Valley and New, though you must enter off of Valley. And this place is popular, so the parking lot will fill up, and you may need to try and find street parking. I have wanted to try Sichuan Hot Pot for some time, since I heard about it from my crazy ex girlfriend, and even more so once Kelly and I saw Anthony Bordain go when he was in Sichuan China. And then I read about some places to go in Los Angles at ChowHound and wanted to try one, but it wasn't until I read about LU Gi at LA Food Crazy that Kelly and I called our friends and decided to make a night out of it. This place is rather small, and we had a large party of 9, which barely fit at a long table (really barely), though they do have one big round table, but you must make a reservation for this (and they do speak english here, so you should call if you are going to have a large party). The place is small, but the waiters are very helpful, and will fill out the order from (which is completely in Chinese). They give you water, and have beer and wine and will serve you quickly and efficiently. And the place is pretty cheap. With tip it came out to $16 each slip between 8 people. Well worth it, and I will certainly try it again.

Went again with 3 of us total this time, and ordered too much food, though it was damn tasty, and we did make a major dent. And Kelly really was impressive with how much hot pot we ate. This place is amazing.

Some of the meet and veggies before they were put in the pot.

3 Shots of our overfull hot pot.

On LA Food Crazy's recommend, and because we had some people who can't hand Sichuan hot we decided to try the Yin and Yang bowl. FOr our table we got two big pots filled with boiling liquid, but split down the middle, one side with Sichuan Hot Pot, a spicy mix of red chili oil and sichuan peppers and garlic that looks much like molten lava, and the other side has a nice sesame broth for those who either can't handle the spice, or want to temper it a bit.

Now I had to do the ordering an I admit I messed up a bit because I did not order cabbage or enough veggies, but you can order just about anything, from Tripe to pork belly. We ordered 3 plates of thin sliced AAA beef, 2 orders of thin sliced chicken, and an order of pork. We also got some beef balls and shrimp balls (all very dense and not too tasty), an order of spinach and about 3 bowls of noodles. Next time I would order cabbage, mushrooms and some more veggies too.

The sesame broth was way too bland for me, but could be improved with a bit of the spicy broth.

The spicy broth was quite tasty, and includes some tofu that is so damn spicy it was spectacular. My biggest complaint is that for being called Sichuan Hot Broth it didn't have any chinese peppercorns in it, and I love that spicy and numb feeling that peppercorns give. I still liked the spicy broth, in fact it was quite delicious, but would have been better with peppercorns in it. To make it even better a bit of rice vinegar into your bowl of broth, which adds an amazing zing to the delicious meat.

I highly recommend the spicy broth, and am a huge fan of Sichuan hot pot, and will keep trying different ones. I love Sichuan spice! Delicious! Of course you have to be ready for the inevitable burning diarrhea that will come the next morning, especially if you drink some of the delicious broth, but the pain if worth pleasure!

On the second trip I ordered way too much food for 3 of us. I got 2 orders each of the grade A beef, 2 orders of pork and 2 orders of chicken, and I must say I like the Beef and Chicken the best. We also got an assorted plate of fish balls, some tempura, spinach, cabbage, watercress, noodles, taro root, and some strange tied noodles. And the food was amazing, and so damn tasty. This place is just delicious. The broth is spicy and as tasty as can be. I can't recommend this place more highly.