Hot Pot Galaxy

I never see any customers here no matter how busy the other places around it are. I tried it out the other day since I was craving Taiwanese style hot pot and this was the closest thing I could find. The food is below average the service is ok. The spicy beef hot pot ($ 17 including tax doesn’t include rice) uses tough meat with minimal spice. It’s not spicy at all.
Also a tip. When you get a take out order of hot they skimp on the ingredients that goes inside cuz I guess you don’t find out until you get home.

First off, this place replaced Tangerine, but ownership did not change. You’ll notice that some of their posters still has Tangerine printed on there.
I have to admit, I decided to try this place because there was a Groupon deal, otherwise it’s not something I would’ve tried.
As we entered the restaurant, the employees there are very quick with greeting their guests. The gentleman seated us right away as it wasn’t really busy around noon. The menu choices is a mixture of chinese fast food (i.e. kung pao chicken), ramen, and hot pot. They also have a good selection of drinks (i.e. teas, coffees, etc.) and desserts.
What led me to give this place a 3 was the taste of the food. There were 4 of us, 2 of us ordered rice dishes and the other 2 ordered ramen. The ramen was pretty decent, portion was good, enough to feel satisfied. However, the rice dishes were really salty and dry.
We also ordered drinks, my cousin ordered her drink with boba but the restaurant didn’t have boba straws and gave her a regular straw instead. The staff didn’t think to give her a spoon to scoop up the boba. I ordered a hot drink and was given the drink without a lid so my tea got cold, real fast.
Overall, this place was ok. It’s not bad if Curry House is too busy and there’s a Groupon deal.

Came by on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. The weather was just right for something warm and hearty. We actually had plans to go to the shabu shabu located on the top floor, but they were closed for lunch. We walked in and were greeted by a. Latin gentleman? Yea it was slightly odd for us too. We had to do a double take on this one. So all around this restaurant was wall to wall neon art that was in 3-​D? You’d have to ask for the captain crunch 3-​D glasses from the wait staff to see the vision of the mural. Moving right along.
A nice young Asian waitress who was obviously in training, took our orders. My eyes were fixed on the warm spicy tonkatsu ramen. As soon as I was ready to order, she stopped me talked about their awesome lunch specials. Hmmm. That was a bit anti-​climactic.
Anywho, I still ordered my spicy but not so spicy ramen. The chasu was okay. A bit fatty and not so tender. The soup was okay, just not spicy enough and slightly too watery, but the noodles were pretty good.
Probably don’t plan on coming back for a while. It was a decent experience in Little Tokyo.

The service, although nice, was ridiculously slow. We ordered a drink while waiting and by the time we were seated and had ordered, our boba still wasn’t ready. The ramen was mediocre at best and the hotpot seemed okay.

Service ++, Ambiance ++ Food ++
Our family of three just returned from dinner at the Hot Pot Galaxy where we thoroughly enjoyed our experience. Jose, our waiter, was outstanding. He was warm, friendly, attentive but not intrusive.
I ordered the Vegetarian Hot Pot. I have not had a Hot Pot so I can offer no comparison review. I can tell you that it was absolutely delicious. The tomato broth was just right, the vegetables fresh, the presentation delightful. My husband and daughter had the ramen that held up to all but the most authentic ramen restaurants that we have enjoyed. A few reviews mentioned that the food was tasteless. We certainly did not find that to be true. The ambiance was unique. I always enjoy a restaurant that does not have 20 TV’s blaring at you while you try to converse with your dining partners.
Thank you Hot Pot Galaxy for one of the most enjoyable meals we’ve had out in a while.
Please do note that the do not yet have a liquor license so you might want to check if you can bring your own.
**FYI, I am truly a consumer that was not paid or solicited in anyway to write this review! Jose, was so awesome that I could to help but come home and share our experience.

Pretty cool décor (under black lights!) — ask for 3D glasses!
2 of us (2-​girls) came here for dinner Wed night at 7:30pm (pretty empty) after we sat down customers start coming in!
Check in Unilocal for your free Seaweed Salad!
We ordered the following:
1 Popcorn chicken (pretty good!)
1 Deep fried Shu Mai (pretty tasty!)
1 Creamy Corn seafood hot pot (our fav!)
1 Hot & Spicy beef hot pot
I believe the serving for each hot pot can fill up one person.
Overall if it wasn’t for the Groupon, I wouldn’t know about this place. But, I’m glad I gave this place a try! Will be back!
Don’t forget to ask for parking sticker ^^

We had the creamy corn seafood hot pot and it was delicious. My children said it was their favorite soup. It was sweet and creamy; just how they like it.
They were short staffed, but the food and atmosphere made up for that. I recommend this place.

Amazing vegetable ramen! Get it with the Thai broth! So yumm! And make sure you take advantage of the BOGO boba milk tea! They have excellent service, super cool 3D Art, and fun music to do your happy dance while you eat the yumminess! I have no idea why people wait so long at neighboring ramen spots. It’s all hype, in my opinion. This place is perfect.

Wanted to try something new and was too lazy to Unilocal a place. Instead, I went on Groupon to check out local deals.
Stumbled upon this. Purchased my Groupon and hunted this place down. The parking lot was a bit difficult to find. The parking space was crowded as well with a sign that says «WE DONT PROVIDE FREE PARKING». Great.
Took an elevator and walked to this place. I loved their 3D mural with buddha eating noodles. The kind lady also gave us 3D glasses to get the full effect of the art.
Beef hot-​pot– Really enjoyed this. It wasn’t as good as my go-​to hot pots but it tasted better since I had a great view hahah
Beef ramen (?) — my bf also thought it tasted okay. When I tasted the broth, it was delicious! Loved how flavorful and spicy it was. The contents tasted okay]
Seaweed Salad — Free with check in! This was really good. I bit odd at first but it’s because I didn’t mix it well
I would definitely return, but only with a Groupon. The price of their hot pots were a tad bit too much for my wallet.

This place is located on the second floor in the jtown plaza. On their website they say they open at 1, but they actually open at 130pm. This place is fairly small so not many tables are available. The servers here are extremely nice and friendly, even tho they’re really slow. The place was pretty filled when we came, and the two workers were kind of juggling to keep up with the pace.
Me and my friend ordered their hotpot but it was super mediocre. I ordered the tomato vegetable hotpot and their soup wasn’t the best. Boiling point is definitely better when it comes to tomato soup. The stuff inside the pot is also Mehhh. I don’t like the cabbage that they put in there, but I do loveeee the noodles that are in there. It’s the thick glass noodles.
Cons:
— Their hotpot is expensive compared to other restaurants
— Hotpot doesn’t come with rice/​noodles or a drink during lunch
— They don’t really have sauce for your hotpot like other places do. They just have this spicy sauce but that’s about it
— The food comes out really slowly, had to wait like 15 – 20 mins.
— Need more workers if the place is busy

I would give this place a 3.5 if Unilocal allowed half stars.
Hot Pot Galaxy is decked out in space themed neon paint and blacklight. Hence the name «Galaxy.» They even have 3D glasses available to stare at the walls. I appreciated the dedicated unique theme.
The service was friendly but slow and awkward. We didn’t know there were more food options until after we ordered as we were only given the hotpot menu. Both of which slightly differed from each other. Clearly organization is a bit lacking.
The food was a hit and miss. The beef hot pot was extremely salty and oily. I asked for clear broth or water to dilute my dish. That made it slightly better but still VERY salty. The flavor is definitely there… but they need to find the right balance between flavorful & salty. The Tonkatsu Pork however was really good! I would definitely recommend sticking to the lighter broths. We really enjoyed the Tonkatsu broth. Both hotpot dishes had a lot of veggies & fishcakes. Not too much noodles or meat but the veggies filled me up! The hotpot is not served with rice though, boo. At $ 16 a pop I would think it would come with rice.
Overall I LOVE that there’s finally a hot pot spot in LA. Wouldn’t mind coming here on days I’m too lazy for SGV/​Montery Park. Not quite up to par with Boiling Point but it fulfilled my hotpot craving.

At first I was skeptical about eating here but the food was Good! (Ordered the Beef Tonkatsu, Medium spice) they had decent portions & not too expensive. Their signature drinks are pretty good as well, but I wish they served Alcohol. The ambience in this restaurant is very relaxed & the murals are crazy amazing. Real nice waiters & the service was fast. This is definitely our new spot! If you have previously dinned at Chin Ma Ya, (Tan Tan Men) and are looking for a similar taste & ambience then this is a spot you should try.

If it wasn’t for the Groupon deal that I found, I would’ve never come here… ever. The food is terrible. The waiter is a nice dude but that doesn’t make up for the fact that the food is atrocious. No taste. I guess you can say there’s a reason why they have to resort to Groupon to attract customers…
When I was doing my research on this place, I didn’t know what it was called. Tangerine? Hot Pot Galaxy? Just expect another name change in a few months! The menu is really diverse… they have hot pot, rice dishes, boba, etc… But beware… there are some menus that are different! We were handed 2 different menus without notice.
I decided on the military pork hot pot ($ 15) and it was awful. If you’ve had good hot pot before (i.e Boiling Point) or something similar, you’re going to hate this place. If you’re a hot pot newbie, maybe you’ll like it cause you don’t have anything to compare it to. The broth was bland as can be. It was straight up tomato broth from a can. Usually, the broth is typically infused with spices flavors but this tasted like it was right from a tomato juice can… The meat was room temperature even with the flame underneath the pot. There were lots of ingredients inside the pot, I’ll give this place that… but aside from that, not much going for it. You pay $ 15 for a terrible tasting hot pot and they don’t even give you rice. That would be an extra $ 1 charge.
They validate your parking based on how long you dine at the restaurant so don’t expect a 2 hour validation if you only sit there for 45 minutes… The parking entrance is on 2^nd street.
I would not go back.

+ Cool atmosphere
+ Food is good
+ Nice variety to choose from
+ Great Groupon deal ($ 40 worth of food for $ 24)
— Service is a bit lacking
I’ve been here a few times for lunch with coworkers of mine and we’ve never been failed by the food. However, we’ve been failed by the service before. Sometimes getting orders wrong or not asking us if we need anything. Having us usually waving our hands around looking for someone to come by. I’ve also witnessed an instance where they actually lost 2 customers because those 2 weren’t attended to.
If they can clean up the service and tighten that section up, they’d be great. Overall, I’d come again, but not too often. Only if I really really want to eat here.

Service– the servers were very nice.
They answered our questions properly, especially the server with glasses. He was nice enough to give us 2 free seaweed salads instead of 1 after we checked in on Unilocal.He was also a good sales trying to sell us boba.
Food– soso
1) chasun ramen, so salty. They used the chinese bbq pork instead of the Japanese one. The noodle they used is the egg noodle called ’ oil noodle’ in chinese, not the Japanese noodle.
2) soy milk hot pot, the fish cakes were way more than the meat. There wasn’t enough meat and the noodle. It didn’t come with rice, and the noodle came with the hot pot wasn’t enough… so. …
Atmosphere
I do think it was cool with the 3D painting, though it’s not really my taste. I do think it’s an interesting and eye catching idea in j town, a little hipster area.

When I checked in on Unilocal,it stated I was here at Hot Pot a time before; I figured that it was because the owners of Tangerine converted over to Hot Pot Galaxy.
Going into Hot Pot was an acid trip; literally, ACID trip. The walls were decked out with a beautiful mural in neon paint, which you could have asked for a pair of 3D glasses, if you wanted to enjoy the whole experience.
For starters, the drinks menu looked oddly familiar, simply because it’s the same menu that were around when the place was called Tangerine. Besides the point, my friend and I decided to get two hot pots to share and a small bowl of corn soup. My friend mentioned at the end of our ordering that we had a Groupon to use.
Food didn’t take too long to come out, and I was kind of meh about the whole luster. The hot pots weren’t bad, but there were missing some stuff. I felt it was filled with a whole bunch of fillers like fish cakes or mushrooms and not enough of other stuff, like veggies or meat. My friend’s opinion was that this place is catered towards more of the Americanized palette, as we’re more accustomed to more authentic hot pot.
But that isn’t the reason why I dropped my rating.
At the end of our meal, as any normal experience would be, we asked for our bill. When my friend was pulling up her Groupon, she noticed that we didn’t order Thai ice tea and called the male server back. In fact, the receipt that we got wasn’t even ours to begin with. My friend mentioned this to him, and also that we would like to use the Groupon. For five minutes, the server walked back to our table twice, reviewing what we had ordered and it looks like they may have given our receipt to the party next to us, and needed to reprint it.
Once we got the correct bill, my friend kindly reminded the male server that we had a Groupon that we will be using, and he had applied it to the new receipt. Instead of waiting for a quick moment for me to pull my card to pay, he disappeared and I was left holding my bill in the air, trying to get the female server’s attention. I decided to head up to the serving station and gave the bill and my card to her. She said that would bring the slips back to my table, so I can sign and be on our way.
When I received my approval to sign off on the charges, I reviewed the bill and noticed that she had charged me for the FULL amount of our meal, even though the receipt clearly stated that the Groupon was applied. I went back to the server, letting her know what happened, and instead of just swiping my card to refund me back the extra $ 20 that was charged, she gave me cash back. I wouldn’t have mind that, except that she gave me the amount that was due to the restaurant, instead of the Groupon amount of $ 20. Granted, it was a dollar and change that I didn’t get back, but this entire ordeal left me frustrated that I probably won’t be returning to this galaxy.

— Located at 2^nd floor of Weller Court
— HUGE SERVING. Spicy Tonkasu Ramen came out to be $ 9.95 + tax. The serving size was gigantic, thick cuts of meat. Super satisfying. Even the corn in the ramen was huge and delicious.
— Free seaweed salad for Unilocal Check in
— Cool 3D mural on the wall. It was trippy.
***If you text «hotpot» to 95 577, you can redeem a free boba milk tea.

Bought the groupon $ 10 for $ 20 and wasnt allowed to get the free seaweed salad from checking in on Unilocal.I ordered the Hot and Spicy Beef Hot Pot.
Overall value, great. $ 15 and the dish came with more meat relative to other Hot Pot restaurants. Just the right amount of spiciness with a very tasteful broth. After finishing the broth, I had a runny nose. The meal would have been a perfect dish on a colder day.
Level of service, below average given only 2 people were attending to diners, for 8 – 10 parties. Water refills took forever, and took over 15 min to receive the check.
In the end, the taste of the meal outweighed the lackluster service and I’d go back again (but only if I’m not in a rush)

This is no longer Tangerine. It serves different food. Today was my second time stopping here. The service is attentive and flawless.
I ordered the Kung Pao chicken lunch set. The green beans were heavily salty. The chicken was barely passable. The hot pot had a flavor, which I didn’t care for.

My girlfriend and I were actually on our way to eat Orochon until we stumbled upon this restaurant while walking up the stairs. We had noticed a sign in the front with a picture of their special «Spicy Tonkatsu chashu ramen,» which looked appealing enough for me to ditch Orochon to try this new hot pot /​ramen joint.
Upon walking in, we were greeted and sat down in a not so isolated booth with our backs against the mirror side of the restaurant. Our side was well illuminated by halogen lights while the other side was emitted by the black UV lights up top, which I thought was pretty cool. The black UV side of the restaurant had what looks like to be a graphic print of a Buddha, planets, and dragons with such vibrant colors definitely giving the room some lively and vigorous energy.
So we decided to order two spicy Tonkatsu chashu ramen’s. I request some extra chashu pork slices to be added to my bowl. This bowl was pretty amazing and the spicy level was just near perfect for my girlfriend and I. The chashu slices were tender, salty, sweet, fatty melt in your mouth loving delicious! The broth was also flavorful as well complimenting the hard boiled eggs inside the bowl. For dessert, we actually wanted to try the «Mango Madness,» but unfortunately they ran out of milk so our server suggested to substitute it with the green tea. We decided to go with that choice and also added Mango, Peach, and honey boba which was amazing! The green tea shaved snow was creamy with a tip of heavenly texture!
Customer service was prompt and excellent. A lot better than most restaurants in my opinion. I’ll definitely come back, but I’m alternating between Orochon and here to see who’s best.