Hot Pot Palace Buffet - San Jose

We finally had a chance to try this restaurant. For some reason I thought this place would be similar to the hot pot city on McCarthy Ranch. So I was looking forward to have some grill meat for lunch. Walking in the restaurant, I looked around and saw only regular tables. Then it dawned on me that they only do hot pot and not grill.


The waiter seated us. On the table, there was a printed menu with different broth available to pick from. We both chose Thai tom yum. Another type of broths available were plain meat broth, Szechuan spicy broth, mushroom flavor, sauerkraut flavor, Vietnamese sweet and sour, Chinese herbal , etc

There were two bottom parts of hot pot on the table with some pink gel 'fuel' on it. ha..ha.. I'm not too sure what the pink stuff was. It looked like the sort of gel that made up candles that I bought before. Then we were welcomed to check out the buffet line. One side of the line was the ingredients that will go in the hot pot. Plates of thinly sliced beef and pork. Next to it was different types of noodle - yellow and rice noodle and also thinly sliced chicken. Different types of veggies - napa cabbage, cabbage, greens (that looked like spinach), etc. Another thing that I loved most but never get to cook at home is tripe. This chewy thing was already cooked, just need to be thrown in and heated up well. Awesome.

Btw, next to the first line of buffet was glass jars of minced different stuffs to make your own dipping sauce. Green onion, cilantro, garlic, ginger, jalapeno, bean paste, chilli paste etc. Then bottles of sesame oil, soy sauce, fish sauce, vinegar, etc. So grab your little bowl and prepare your dipping sauce to your liking.

Then on the other side of the buffet line was dimsum. The choices available for dimsum was typical shumai, chives dumpling, bao, egg rolls. Nothing too special about them. I also tried the phi tan congee and the hot sour soup. I thought the soup was pretty good even though the congee was just fine. But hey I have to work on my hot pot which is my main attention that day.

By the time I was done I didn't have much room for dessert. Hubby tried the dessert line which according to me was not special at all. Hubby put together a bowl of different types of pudding topped of with shaved ice. Seriously the idea was good but they should have put out better stuffs like mung bean/red bean, corn, nata de coco, etc. Those items would make better combinations for shaved ice than soggy pudding (even in the different color nonetheless). But hey, after a few rounds of hot pot, I couldn't complain much about dessert since I didn't have any room left. I needed to have special compartment in my tummy for dessert.

Hot Pot Palace Buffet
1628 Hostetter Rd, San Jose, CA 95131   (408) 392-0566

Comments