One of the most overlooked hotpot restaurant in SGV, I always find it empty during lunch, this place should have a line around the block at all open hours. The food is affordable, every item is has been carefully select and quality is premium. The soup base is incredible even though you can’t tell from the presentation, the store doesn’t have the best ambiance, but a foodie’s priority should always be about the food. This place carries a Taiwanese identity, and the environment is very fitting. Nothing is over the top, which makes it very authentic and modest. If you are a normal human being, you will learn to appreciate the profound effort someone put in to create such delicious food, at least, that’s why I would go back.

Authentic Taiwanese hot pot place. Funny and friendly owner who comes to your table to chat with you. Always quick with their service. We always left satisfied, and plan to come back next time.

From Lu Gi to Ah-Lien. From San Gabriel, Temple City, Rowland Heights, to Irvine. I’ve been eating Mr. Lu’s hot pot for 20 years! To this day, this is still my favorite hot pot. Unfortunately, the Irvine location is no longer owned by Mr. Lu. Now Mr. Lu is back at the Rowland Heights location. Lucky for us, we are only 20 minutes away now. While waiting for the hot pot soup to boil, we headed over to the sauce bar to make our dipping sauce. The soup base doesn’t have any MSG in it. So for people who like to add MSG, there’s a bottle of MSG powder at the sauce bar.. LOL! My favorite dipping sauce for spicy hot pot is simple. Green onion, cilantro, garlic, vinegar, and sesame oil. We ordered 1/2 spicy soup and 1/2 sour cabbage soup. The spicy soup base came with leeks and tofu. The sour cabbage soup base came with sour cabbage and frozen tofu. It is seriously the best hot pot soup base I’ve had. No salt, no MSG. Just true flavor from vegetables, bones, and spices. Now let’s see what we had. Sliced Angus Beef | $6.95 Sliced Mutton | $6.95 Pork Intestine | $5.95 Pork Blood | (Half) $2.95 Pork Balls | (Half) $2.30 King Mushroom | (Half) $1.95 Oyster Mushroom | (Half) $1.95 Frozen Tofu | (Half) $1.65 Tung Ho | $3.50 Everything was good and fresh. We even had enough leftover for another meal. The hot pot feast only cost about $40 for 2 people. It’s about the same for shabu shabu. But we feel we get much better and much more food at Ah-Lien. We love this restaurant. Now the weather is cold, it’s perfect for hot pot. I can eat this every day, I think.