Haha sounds like Cracker Barrel in USA

Hmm, actually good hot pot place is not only Hai di lao, there are so many other choices. I like 蟹老宋/ xie4 lao3 song4 and 龙顺园麻辣香锅/ long2 shun4 yuan2 ma2 la4 xiang1 guo1 which is in Ya Yun cun.

Maybe the nice environment and 5 star service makes Hao di lao so famous. However they do have their special quality, like Xia hua/ shrimp..sth made balls, and duck blood( I hate that stuff, but can only try a little bit there) . Really good tho.

was in one of these places a few weeks ago.

had a great time.
Great food, great service.
just because somewhere is a chain does not mean its comparible to a fast food chain

No idea what you guys are talking about..

It's good for long winter nights

Hot Pot is disgusting.

Same category of food to me as "ma la tong".

Hot pot water is re-used and re-used, don't fool yourself.

hot pot is my least favorite

well i have to say hai di lao is one of my favorite hot pot places in town. i know they have multiple locations, but not sure if i would label them the pizza hut of hot pot. great service and yummy food. that's all i care about.

Right...a terrible reason to eat stuff.

I'd just like to point out that it doesnt give me the runs.
I mean...when I first got here it did...cause thats what I was eating when I first got here.

I should also point out that I eat alot of chillies now due to my experience in the sticks.
Perhaps why I'm now quite fond of hot pot.

How could it be dirty? I don't like it much - boring - but you junk a whole lot of stuff in boiling soup and cook the bejeezus out of it (another problem - too much stuff gets overcooked). I'd say it'd be a helluva lot less risky to eat hotpot than chow down at your standard Chinese greasy spoon. Boiling liquid - even if it is recycled - is a great purifier.

??

Well, how can it be dirty if the whole point of it is to boil the f*** outta everything?

There are plenty of charges you can level at hotpot. "Dirty" just ain't one of them.

If you boil sh*t, does it become clean?

How about old/rotten meat?

Don't fool yourself.

Its probably alot safer than chuan'r depending on where you get your chuan'r

If you are worried about the soup being re-used then Haidilao would be a good option as they bring a fresh packet of mala sauce to your table and open it in front of you - possibly to demonstrate that it is NOT reused.

I don't like hot pot but I've been dragged to Haidilao a few times and it's bearable.

The noodle dance is cool and those noodles do taste nice cooked in the soup. The white radish is good cooked in the mala sauce. The lemon drink is quite refreshing - I guess that's free? - meat cooked in mala sauce is always reasonable.

Of course everthing tastes exactly the same as it's all cooked together, it's fiddly and you risk sprashing your date with hot oil whenever you try to hoik some dissolving lump out of the cauldron, and you are paying a restaurant which then makes you cook the food yourself - but that's hot pot.

No? Why's that?