hai di lao huo guo, shanghai

Who knew we'd have to wait at least one and a half hours for a hot pot tonight in Shanghai.

hai di lao huo guo:

We were seated in the 'second' waiting room after grabbing a ticket for our table. Each table contains a menu of all the hot pot ingredient the restaurant has to offer. You just put a number next to each dish you want to indicate the quantity and hand it in after you're seated.
Each table is given a free jug of plum juice and board game to keep you occupied while you wait. We play Chinese chess. If you're thinking 'Why not just give us Wi-Fi?', you'll be happy to know that if you follow the path to the toilets, you'll pass by a room with a dozen or so people using the restaurant supplied computers to surf the net and listen to music or watch movies! (They even provided head phones!).

waiting room:

During your wait, waitresses will walk around to refill a green plastic compartment try (below). The popcorn is especially addictive. I don't even know what flavour it is! It was both sweet and savoury at the same time. Salted peanuts, watermelon and candy were all refillable. If the waitress happen to walk past you, you can walk up to the front where there are bowls of self serve snacks and refill it by yourself!

"Why don't we just eat these snacks till we're full and just leave?" my brother would burst out every few minutes since he didn't want to wait. Seriously, you'd think you were eating the world's greatest hot pot or something if you saw how many more people were waiting inside. In the photo above, we were just sitting half way of the room.

snack tray:

Next to the PC room is a free beauty fix for your nails! I couldn't believe that I hadn't discovered this earlier. Would have lined up much earlier. My dad came in and he asked me why I wasn't doing my nails. I didn't know what he was talking about so he led me to this room. Next to the nail section is scented solution to clean your glasses or any other surfaces. I cleaned my phone screen while I was waiting for my nails to be done.

nail room:

the stock for our hotpot:

We picked a non-spicy and spicy split hot pot. When the waitress returned to the table to empty the spicy contents, we told her to pour in only a half. The result? Above.

fat lamb rolls (¥40:00):

They felt and looked frozen. I like the 'fat' lamb in Australia better. It's thinner and when you say fat, Australian fat on their lamb meat makes this taste lean.

beef rolls (¥54:00):

Beef tasted pretty normal. Too normal. You can eat this anywhere.

fish balls (¥42.00):

Holy smoly. These were the BEST fish balls I have ever tasted in my life. I just wanted to eat this and only this but I had to share so I only had 2.

huzhou beef balls (¥34.00):

When you bit into these, you could feel the mincey texture against your tongue and I didn't like that all. Taste was fine though.

mixed mushroom platter (¥48:00):

Mushrooms! A must in hot pots. I didn't really feel the heat of the spicy hot pot until I ate this. The mushrooms absorb so much spice - watch out! But it was okay since I like spicy food and this sort of fragrant and lingering burn was new to me.

yangzhou fried rice (¥6.00):

Best Yangzhou fried rice I had all trip! It was a tiny bowl - like those you get in yum cha.

fish tofu (¥22.00):

My aunt recommended this since it was her favourite food to add in hot pot. We all loved it too. It was harder than normal tofu but still very easily broken if not handled properly.

spinach (¥18.00):

Good old greens.

I didn't catch the price we had to pay because I had to rush back to the nail place to finish my nails (they called our table in the middle of my manicure!) but I'm pretty sure it wasn't expensive since we were already pretty full from this. I think the max amount we could have paid here was 360RMB. which is 10pp! After the meal, I still didn't understand why people would line up for hours to eat here. It was pretty "normal" - nothing great that is.

hai di lao huo guo
中国 上海 杨浦区
邯郸路585号苏宁电器5楼
t: 021-60738557