After a few months of renovations, Han Ju tofu hotpot reopened a new and we were more than excited to go check out what the new place had to offer. Their menu expanded quite a bit compared to the original one that only had around eight items, but at the same time, their prices rose quite a bit. They also offer a variety of bubble tea drinks now as well.
Not the best customer service
We ordered three items knowing that it would be enough to fill all of our tummies. Mother deer and old bean arrived at the restaurant shortly after we made our order. A little bit after they sat down, the owner came over to our table asking for our order. We were confused because we already made our order. I kindly told her that the waitress already took our order.
At this time, the owner basically told us sternly that there is a policy that everyone MUST order at least $3 worth of food item each, not collectively, but each. She then also made sure that we knew that this “policy” should have been already known to us from the beginning. We thought this was ridiculous because she was FORCING us to make an order of food. Plus she was extremely RUDE about it.
Japanese style noodle pot
Lil’ bun picked to get the Japanese style noodle pot ($7.50) which was supposed to have udon noodles, tofu, pork, egg, shrimp, mussels and squid. We were let down when the pot arrived at the table because instead of finding lots of seafood goodies, there were only two shrimps, one mussel and no squid was to be seen. While there was a decent amount of noodles in it, we were just really disappointed that there wasn’t more to it than that especially when the prices here rose as well.
Stewed beef on rice
Brother deer chose to get the stewed beef on rice ($7.95), which came in a bibimbap style presentation. He thought that it was alright and it wasn’t too bad but like lil’ bun earlier, he was let down because even though it was a “stewed beef on rice”, it was more of a vegetable on rice dish than anything else.
Korean style kimchi pot
I chose to get the Korean style kimchi pot ($7.50), and it lacked in seafood even more so than lil’ bun’s order did. A bulk of the pot was filled with green bean thread and all there was only ONE slice of pork, ONE slice of tofu, ONE calamari ring and the egg inside. Although the menu described the item as having kimchi, shrimp and mussels, there was none inside. This came as a HUGE disappointment to me.
Beef noodle soup
This is the beef noodle soup ($7.50) mother deer ordered after we were FORCED to order another two items. We only ordered one more item because, as I said earlier, we were really not happy about being forced to order more menu items when we really didn’t even need it. This beef noodle soup was much too heavy in star anise and there was few noodles to be found inside.
The pieces of beef were also quite chewy as well. Like I said before, we really didn’t even need to order this item and after forcing ourselves to take a few bites of it just because it was served hot to us at the table, we took a good 80% of it home. The noodles of course ended up being soggy by the time we got hungry enough to eat the rest of it at home later on.
Mother deer said that we should have cone somewhere else. While mother deer and I both used to praise and like HanJu quite a bit, we were both extremely disappointed and horrified with our visit. I don’t think we’ve left a restaurant so angry and unhappy in a long long time. We are not going to be back to Han Ju tofu hotpot…ever…not after this visit.