A & J Hot Point Hot Pot

Parking: abundant
Ambience: casual but watch out for the wires of the floor
Food: spotty quality BUT love the half serve yourself portion.
My friend and I ordered one of everything. I personally liked the brisket best. Yes, some of the meats were fatty but I still liked it that way.
Love, love, love the self serve vegetables. We mostly ate the tomatoes, quail eggs, and rice cakes.
Broth we chose were Korean (which did not taste like kimchi. Just like a light beef broth) and Japanese curry (it’s turmeric. You’re not going to be surprised here). Flavors were definitely present.
Egg noodles or rice available.
Sauces: awesome. I mixed green onions with satay and garlic. Yum. 2 spoons of satay. One spoon garlic.
All in all, I really like the all you can eat AYCE option. 17.99 each with cash OR 19.99 each with credit.
I paid $ 51 total for two.
Would I go again? Yes! Better than Lu Gi in San Gabriel

Good place for hot pot lover where you can eat all you want. Alot of selection of side dish and foods. The broth is avarage. The big negative is the customer service. Even though they are really nice but the number of server is so few compare to numerous customer they have. The owner needs to hire more employees. Another thing is most of the sever is don’t understand English. I have a trouble order things when the servers is very sort of English and only speaking in Chinese.

As a hot pot fan, I would say this place is my all time favorite. I am so happy they opened a new one in Arcadia, good job guys for keeping good quality!

Good food, good service and good price (cash). I sat down near the corner of the place but it was very dark, and was told the light didn’t work in that area. It was cold so I didn’t want to move towards the door. Overall, a good AYCE Chinese hot pot place.

This is the best hot pot place I have been to in a while. The price is reasonable and they have a bunch of sides that are free and AYCE. The spring rolls, fried mentou and beef tripe are delicious, so is the soup base. We picked the mushroom soup base which was good. The Szechuan soup base with medium spicy was too spicy so we stopped eating that half. Overall great dining experience.
We came at 6.00 pm Sunday and had to wait a little while to get a table. I noticed there were empty table at around 8.00 p.m. Maybe better to come a little later. Would come back again.

This is a ALL U CAN EAT hotpot located at 8508E Valley Blvd STE 102 Rosemead Ca91770！This place is so good that they have seven different flavories of soup base u can choose！Everything is included in one price，no other charges except drinks！ Compare to other single order hot pot place this is my best choice to eat ！veggies bar had almost 30 kind of veggies，they have sauses bar that i can mix whatever sauses i like！The meat is really fresh；seafood，fresh meatballs，and they add many new stuff！ I recommend this place！i love their food！
Cash price 17.99 credit/​debit card price 19.99

Here again… I know it’s crazy right driving from Newport Beach. It doesn’t matter because this place is so great.

What happened to this place? It went from amazing to I’m never coming back again :(
Meat quality: we got shredded meat instead of a whole slice. When we put the meat in the hot pot, it disappeared. It was like we ate blended meat. The meat balls or fish balls were in a paste form. So we had to divide the paste according to our likings. But not going to lie, the meat ball paste was pretty good.
Service: no one can speak English, except one dude and I think he was the manager. He literally carried the whole the night we went. Maybe cause we don’t speak Chinese and we were the ones who were struggling? But one of friends spoke Chinese to them but they still didn’t even get our orders right. We had to default to the busy guy the whole time. Poor guy.
You’re better off buying drinks next door or order soda because their water is so gross. I grew up with tap water from restaurants but this one has a strong pipe water…
I’ve been here about 10 times already and it had progressively gotten worse. Today was the last straw. But it’s nice to know that everyone who can have a conversation with them can enjoy their meal.

I do not usually write a review, but when I do…
It’s either really good or really bad.
Let’s start with good things about this place:
1. They have appetizer and veggie buffet section
2. The soup broth (healthy and mushroom) are pretty good
3. They have many kinds of dipping sauce
Bad things about this place:
1. Most of the food that they provided are too salty (meatball, fishball, etc)
2. The meat quality is bad, mostly fats
3. The price that we paid $ 20 cash (for lunch on Saturday) is not worth it if we compare with the quality that we got
4. It took a long time for them to prepare the meat, meatball, etc in the kitchen
5. The service is so-​so
To sum up, we don’t think to come back here. Sorry A&J!

At $ 17.99 for AYCE hot pot, this place is a bargain (that price is for cash only).
The place is a little cramped, and the décor is a bit nice, albeit a bit dirty at times. There are wires hanging on the floor ready for a lawsuit, as they are the electrical cords connecting the outlet to the table’s electric hot plate.
The broths are well seasoned and taste pretty good, to an extent you might call it salty. I got the «ma-​la» or house spicy flavor on one side and the vegetarian tomato on the other. The ma-​la is pretty dang spicy and has a ton of oil on it. There are way too many floating peppercorns that you’ll find on your food after dipping it into the hot broth, so every bite you take has a whole peppercorn ready to be crushed into your mouth. (I wasn’t a fan of the ma-​la)
However, I found everything else to be pretty good. There are a variety of self-​serve veggies in the back along with a sauce bar and «tapas» bar. There are things like egg rolls and spicy hot beef tripe on a stick in the back there. I really liked the chinese fry bread with condensed milk– great after dinner! Delicious!
The meat quality is not half bad, albeit a bit fat and eventually you can’t tell if you’re eating pork, beef, or lamb. You get what you pay for, and they do a good job of providing variety for a good price.

A windy and chilly day = hot pot heaven :) Also, I purposely cranked up the AC in the car so that my Mom agreed to hot pot, mwhahaha!
It’s been two years since I’ve been back here, and they definitely made some improvements since. Meal prices are still the same $ 15 Lunch and $ 18 Dinner.
Our tummies were happily stuffed. Portions are generous as usual, and Mom got to enjoy her veggies as opposed to the last time she didn’t get to (they ran out of veggies at 830pm, and they are opened until 12am, yikes!?). Service was friendly and attentive. I dig that the servers were cool with me taking pictures, lol!
The only thing my Mom didn’t like was that they didn’t have bigger dishes to hold our cooked food, and that they didn’t have scissors available to cut the glass noodles or vermicelli noodles since they were long and when slipped, the hot water burns.
Besides enjoying our meal, here are some changes that I’ve noticed:
You can order another broth base for free — no extra charges, yay! Before, they would charge you can extra $ 3.99 for the second one, but now, they only charge you $ 3.99 each if you order a 3^rd broth or more.
They have a veggie area now. Before you would have to order the veggies with the proteins, but now you can self serve. Good change since veggies are cheap to buy and they are easy meal fillers, which means less proteins to be ordered, lol!
Also, they have more sauce selections too. Though I still like my two favorites: sesame peanut butter sauce and beef satay sauce. You can either eat those alone or mix them. I personally like mixing them :)
They only have one unisex restroom. Before, they used to have women and men’s. The seating areas are still the same sizes, though the kitchen area has more room now. Just sucks if you gotta pee really bad.
Overall, I still dig this place when craving hot pot. I’m still feeling stuffed, happy, warm and fuzzy when writing this lol!

Oh man, no fresh food and bad service in such a price .wait for so long till the hot pot boiling … Sometimes the fire turned off no matter what, their equipments are out of service and the environment has a lot of staff to improve. The background music are out of fashion and the TV are full of commercials. Most of the programs are loop, not live. Bad impression for the whole store and won’t come again. Specially for the unreasonable credit extra price charge !!! Sorry about my poor review.

Ayce hot pot and it’s cheaper if you pay with cash so bring your bills!
Warning: you WILL get intense food coma and will want to pass out!!!
I love how we can choose whatever we want because all I need is lamb, beef, fish balls, cabbage.
We got the herbal soup base which was decent. The veggies are all laid out in the corner of the restaurant and I noticed the lids were all misplaced and flipped upside down so people probably touched both sides.
This place is does not have the best hygiene though so if you have a weak stomach I wouldn’t really recommend this place.
I found pube hair in my satay sauce. So. Check your food before u put it in your mouth.

This place is not, bad remember to pay cash to get the cash discount, $ 17.99 for all you can eat lunch.
Service was actually really good, our server was pretty on top of his game and it’s nice that you can get our own bowls/​veggies/​spoons etc. overall meat quality was not bad considering it was all you can eat, they have all the basics which was more than enough to satisfy me. I did feel really bloated (Not just because of the all you can eat part) afterwards though, i think the soups and sauces are extremely oily so be wary of that. Would come back again though!

AYCE hot pot yay! $ 17.99 CASH PRICE or $ 19.99 for credit card price for dinner. Not too bad! My bf and I came here for dinner on a Sunday night, place wasn’t crowded. The servers speak primarily Mandarin, and since my Mandarin is not so good, we ordered in english — which had a teensy bit of difficulty, but we got through it.
We got the two soup pot — house spicy level 4 and the house mongolian herbal. Both were yummy but the chili peppers in the spicy one got in the way of my food! You order your meats and various other things on the paper menu, but the veggies and noodles are self serve on the side. The sauce is DIY, which is great because you can mix as many sauces as you want and in as many combinations as you want.
The brisket was pure fat so we didn’t eat that. The rest of the cuts were pretty good — we got the pork, beef chuck, marinated beef, shrimp, lobster balls and fish tofu. NOTE: The skewers on the side are not included in the AYCE price.
Service is okay, they refill your soup pretty regularly, but you have to flag them down to reorder meat or refill the water carafe. Bathroom is unisex, single room. Parking is aplenty in the plaza.

Some quick tips!
1. This place is hidden behind Tip-​Top Sandwiches, there are two restaurants with the A&J banner, but you should just choose the standalone one.
2. Currently they are running a BOGO AYCE special that includes 2 broths.
3. There is a self-​serve bar where you can get sauces, veggies, and tofu along with some pre-​cooked food that is ready to eat.
I really liked the A&J Hot Point in West Covina before they rebranded and dropped the A&J from their name and went independent. Anyways, we decided to try this A&J because it was a lot closer to home and because my girlfriend no longer lives in West Covina.
For starters, when we got there we didn’t have to wait for a table though it was rather busy. There was only one waiter there serving the entire room, which made it really hard to really get service. We ordered our two soup bases that are free to choose and ended up with the healthy Mongolian herbs base and the Japanese coconut curry base.
If you read my other review on Hotpoint, I criticized part of their business plan of making people order their meats and other fish balls, etc. from off a menu and bringing it over to them. It wastes time and seems inefficient. Instead, they should just embrace the model of handling only meat and putting out everything else for people to grab for themselves.
They have a partial implementation here where the sauces and the veggies are out for you to grab. But, we ordered off a menu with lamb, pork, beef, and chicken sliced thin and numerous other seafood choices with fish balls, lobster balls, and other delectable hot pot delights. The problem is that because there was only one waiter, the entire restaurant was waiting on him to fill their pots with more broth, bring them more drinks, or bring them more meat. So service was pretty spotty.
As for the food, we looked over the menu and saw the same menu from Hotpoint in West Covina. And, we ordered the usual suspects and tried every meat. In my opinion, the lamb is probably the worst meat of the four. It is very lean and very tough. For those who are conscious about the fat intake, the lamb is probably the best protein you can pick. I also didn’t like the chicken as it was too fatty and seemed to fall apart a lot. My favorites were the beef brisket and the pork, they were fatty enough and held together fine in the soup.
As for the veggies, we were pretty angry and not satisfied. When we cooked our bok choy, we found that it was incredibly sandy as if they didn’t wash it enough. This caused us to stop eating the veggies that we got because we couldn’t be sure how clean these items were. At least the meat, the fish balls, and the tofu couldn’t be as unclean because they were packaged at some point.
In terms of the hotfood, which there is little of, there was particularly tough pieces of fatty pork belly. These were pretty terrible too.
The soup bases deserve the same criticism as I had for Hotpoint – the coconut curry isn’t thick. The healthy mongolian herb base was one of the better looking ones I have seen. It was a nice milky color, but was quickly ruined by the fat left over from the meats.
The best part was the price! Buy one get one free for $ 20? Sign me up. But, you get what you paid for!
I hope you guys will still try this place at some point; however, they really have to work on their service and cleanliness of their veggies.

I give this place 3 stars for the service but the food kinda made it up.
The BF and I came here on Saturday around 8pm. There was already a line outside with other people waiting. We had to wait about 40 minutes. There was one table empty for about 15 minutes!!! They also gave their friends (one of the employees friends) go ahead of us when we were waiting for so long!!! I just wanted to leave but i know we were next up in line. Then finally, another guy comes out and sat us at the table were it was empty for so long. We figured why they placed no one there because it was crowded and hard to get in and out.
So they do give you a lot of meat! Make sure to tell them to give you little if you dont want to waste all that food that will be leftover!
They have a sauce bar. they have many different kinds of sauces! They also have some cooked food prepared like fried steam buns, eat that with sweet condensed milk. They also have Egg roll which i didnt try. Then right next to it they have all the pre washed veggies, like bok choy, napa, mushrooms, corn, tofu, noodles and all sorts of other things.
Meat they have beef, chicken, lamb and all were very good. They have beef balls and all the hot pot items that you usually eat. But i did wish they had dumplings for hot pot. One thing I like to eat with hot pot.
I had a buy one get one free coupon. Lunch is $ 17.99 AYCE Dinner is $ 19.99. With my coupon, the total came out to be $ 21 something. We did not tip them well because they led someone else go in front of us. I wont be coming back here again.

The food was just okay. The flavor in the house special herbal soup was good. I like that the sliced beef looked fresh. However, there was more wrong with this place than good.
They don’t use heat lamps for the fried stuff. It just sits on the countertop at room temperature. They don’t have ice to cool off the sauces at the sauce station.
They don’t have plates or large bowls for us to use, just tiny saucers.
The vegetables at the buffet are soaking in water and they don’t refill any of it. They ran out of napa cabbage after my first trip to the buffet.
The plates and silverware they gave us were all wet when they arrived at the table. Does nobody know how to dry dishes here?
Not even halfway through our meal, the waitress told us we had to pay and tip her because she was going home. I put down cash. She kept all change and left.
I will never eat here again.

Good service, good food, good value! My gf found out about this place and since it is AYCE, of course I was immediately interested lol. We went for a late dinner around 9pm on a Monday and there was a good crowd there but a few tables were open. I’ve never been to a hot pot joint but it’s almost the same thing as shabu shabu. The only difference I notice is the different broth options.
We went with a split pot of house special (healthy) and kim chee broth. The house special was nothing special but the kim chee was DELICIOUS and spicy!
We loaded up our veggies at the fix’n bar and got back to the table to order some meat. We started with chicken hearts, tripe, cooked pork belly, shrimp, and fish (I think it was either flounder or trout). I didn’t try the chicken heart or tripe so I can’t say how good they were. Gf said they were okay. The shrimp was what you would expect. My favorite, which I ended up ordering extra of each, was the fish and the cooked pork belly. The fish I enjoyed because it was chinks of filet, it cooked quickly, and was tasty with the broth and veggies. The cooked pork belly was very tender and also worked well with the noodles/​veggies in both broths.
Parking was easy but I can see the shopping center getting crazy during lunch and dinner rush hours. One of the main reasons I’m not giving them 5 stars is because they have separate prices for cash and credit. For cash I think it was $ 18/​person and for credit it’s $ 20/​person. That’s over 10%, come on guys. Still a decent value at $ 20/​person if you’re a big eater like myself :)

For an AYCE hot pot place, it’s pretty good.
They have a good selection of meat and seafood to choose from. You help yourself to a central buffet for the sauces, vegetables, several cooked items which include gizzards and seaweed. I love the fact that they have quail eggs at the veggie section. The broth is pretty good, they have about maybe 6 different types to choose from and you can have a split pot for 2 choices.
Service is good and they are willing to answer questions should you be new to hot pot.