China's largest hotpot chain Haidilao, which late Los Angeles Times food critic Jonathan Gold once described as "the Ferrari of Chinese hot pot restaurants," will soon open a location in San Diego.
Haidilao Hot Pot was founded in Jianyang, China in 1994 and now has nearly 1,000 restaurants in China, Singapore, United States, South Korea, Japan, Canada, the United Kingdom, Malaysia , Vietnam, Indonesia and Australia. Haidilao offers a menu centered around Sichuan-style hot pots made with a selection of 8 rich broths and a lengthy list of dipping options including raw meats, fish, tofu, vegetables and noodles.
The Haidilao Hot Pot restaurants also specialize in entertaining table-side service, which includes employees dancing with hand-made noodles stretched in up to 10-foot-long ribbons with sweeping motions around their bodies. Entertainers are required to undergo between four and six months of training before they are ready to perform the dance. Haidilao takes service seriously and also goes as far as offering diners drinks and snacks while they wait for their tables, as well as hair ties to keep hair out of broth and plastic bags to keep phones from getting damaged from soup splatters. The chain also has a unique ventilation system to keep lingering hot pot smells out of its restaurants.
The San Diego location of Haidilao Hot Pot is currently being installed within the space between Aldo and Zara inside Westfield UTC Mall in La Jolla. The restaurant was originally expected to open in summer 2020, but it is much delayed due to COVID-19 and now isn't anticipated to unveil until summer 2021.
For more information, visit haidilao.com/en/index/index.html and check out the below video of Haidilao's noodle dance.
