Hao’s Kitchen

Definitely an underrated place, especially compared to the likes of boiling point/​jazz cat. But thats more towards the hotpot stuff, and I’ll get to that later.
I want to rave about their beef stew noodle, meat ball, taiwanese rice noodle, and stinky tofu. It was my first time trying the taiwanese rice noodles, I think its called noodle soup with chitterlings or oysters. Sounds gross like stinky tofu, but they both taste better than they sound. Cuz we dont eat with our ears right?
Some of my fellow Unilocalers suggested that the stinky tofu should be crispier and more stinky. I think you need to eat it while its hot. But more flavoring would definitely be good! The meat ball was interesting. I was expecting something something, but it had a hint of sweetness to it.
One of the best beef stew noodles I’ve had in town. The meat is super tender. Broth was savory. Its good with or without chilly oil. Last but not least, i had tried the rice noodle with chitterlings and oysters. Like I said, it was my first time, i didnt know what to expect. The verdict, it was yummy! The soup with the noodle was thick, so its like the consistency of hot and sour soup. Had bits of intestine (aka chitterlings) and pieces of oysters in it. Its perfect for a cold day!
Now I didn’t get to try the advertised hot pot for $ 10. but sounds just like the style of hot pot offered at more popular places like boiling point and jazz cat. But without the wait. I saw another party getting the hot pot. Looks like healthy portions, and same price as boiling point. I definitely gotta come back and try the hotpot and let you all know whats up.

Second the best! Second time coming here and everything got even better! From the taste, the service to the quality! Don’t know how they improved everything but they did! I liked Hao’s Kitchen before but now I love love love this restaurant!
This time around we ordered the Combination tempura with soup, fried stinky tofu, stew firm tofu with white chitterlings rice noodle and A Cai. All were scrumptious and mouth watering good.
Combination tempura with soup– love how the tempura was fresh and savory. The sweet and sour sauce was definitely stronger than the last time I came here. My only complaint is that the side soup was lukewarm.
Fried stinky tofu– oh mannnn… I literally had a foodgasm. Unlike some other Taiwanese places, they fry their tofu in a fresh batch of oil… So the tofu doesn’t have that old frying oil taste and it’s just the right amount of crispy. The side spicy cabbage was also very tasty and complimented the tofu well!
Firm stew tofu with white chitterlings rice noodle soup– Perfect! the rice noodle had the right consistency and the soup def had no msg! Loved the taiwanese celery too, they are generous with how much they sprinkle on top.
A Cai– So tasty! Love that they add braised pork on top and the fish flakes… The pairing makes the flavor just come out.
Hao’s Kitchen definitely «hen hao» («very good»)!

It’s been about 10 months since they opened and 10 months since my last visit – yes, it took 10 months to forget the first bad experience…
The difference is however, that I was pleasantly surprised by how good the food was this time. Maybe it’s cause I went in there expecting crappy food so the level of expectation was low.
We ordered the yam porridge (for $ 1!!), minced pork rice, preserved cabbage and pork noodle soup, and stinky tofu pot.
The minced pork rice was good, nice portions and they didn’t skimp too much on the meat. They do add a good dash of white pepper on top so if u r ordering it for kids, make sure u ask them before hand not to pepper it.
The Preserved cabbage and pork noodle soup was really yummy! Good flavor, noodles were perfectly chewy. Only complaint was that I only found about 4 pieces of tiny pork strips.
The Stinky Tofu Pot was on special for $ 10.95 and included an ice tea. The tea was blah but the tofu pot was definitely da bomb! The variety of ingredients was overwhelming. If I had to purchase each item myself and cook it at home, it would have cost me well over $ 20 for this pot alone. It had soft stinky tofu, fish balls, blood rice cake, veggies, meat slices, mushroom, etc. Good flavor.
I am glad I gave this place a try, I am even more happy that thru time and experience they’ve improved. When reading reviews, I always try to take in to account the dates a review was written. I think every place deserves time for improvement and another chance.

Feels like you’re sitting in a café in Taipei. Perfect Taiwanese snack food when you just need a little comfort and feeling nostalgic. Considerate and quick service. For the price, great value.

Ordered the seafood rice with brown sauce and fried pork chop rice dish. Both were pretty decent and the price was fair. Also got the iced milk tea and wintermelon tea added for $ 1 extra each. They were a little too milky and sweet respectively but can’t complain for just $ 1. Will probably try a hot pot or noodle soup next time.

Well I have never been to Taiwan and certainly not a Taiwanese food expert, but I have made some friends who are. I personally think the food here is ok not great and so it is with them. So I guess that says about this place’s level.
The oyster and intestine noodles were ok. I prefere Won’s Kitchen’s. I had the sticky rice intestine thing once and it wasn’t bad.
Edible and won’t refuse to pay after is howI would categorize this place.

The Egg over fried rice is probably the best dish here… I honestly forgot what that dish was called in english, in chinese it’s called DAN BAO FAN. You should try the honey w/​black tea, it is amazingly good & it’s only a dollar if you order a dish. The service isn’t that good… kind of rude. Nevertheless, try the dan bao fan and one of their honey drinks!

deceptive chinese tv ad makes this place appear 1,000% better than it is.
oyster/​chitling noodle soup — smelly oysters, lukewarm soup… like it had just been reheated in microwave.
squid noodle soup — properly cooked and hot, but did not have much taste.
$ 7 for a small bowl of above.
I shan’t be back.

Disappointing is all I can say, originally we were planning on hitting another spot next door. But due to the lines we decided to give it a try. I was also convinced to try out this little spot. The décor of the joint is nice, very clean and friendly. To get to the point I had only came here for one reason which was to try their shaved iced.
My biggest error would be comparing the place to the other one next door. I really wanted mango snowy but unfortunately was not close. It lacked flavor and the ice cream on top did not make it any better. The food was not horribly bad, its not something I would be wiling to drive all the way from the valley to here.
I do admit the service here was great, quite attentive but its all it had going for it. The entrees were about average and the dessert itself was a downer. Would I be returning again, I’ll think about it. Till then I’ll be patient in line next door.

My friend and I came here for lunch this weekend. We expected that it’d just be a regular Taiwanese deli joint with some nice tasting food.
Pros:
* Plenty of choices. There’s Taiwanese snacks, drinks, shaved ice, and even hot pot.
* The «oyster & intestine vermicelli» tastes really good. I’d definitely come back for that.
Cons:
* The «Big Intestine Wrap Small Intestine» dish… aka «rice sausage bun with pork sausage» is not made the way it should be made. The traditional way is to make it into a hot dog bun style where rice sausage is the bun and the pork sausage is the hot dog. They sliced both sausages and just placed them on a plate. What’s even worse is that they try to sell it at $ 5.95. What a rip off.
* If you want to put a name to something, it better be done in the right style. It’s like when you order a Chicago style pizza, you expect it to see a deep dish pizza. We ordered «Simon Tempura (fish cakes)» and the tempura that came was not even close to the Simon style in Taiwan. Although the fish cakes taste good, the sauce was too sour.
* Staffs are very amiable but lacks training in dealing with complaints.

I was actually pleasantly surprised by the place. :)
Originally we thought it’d be authentic Taiwanese food, and by that we meant Southern Taiwan stuff… because Taipei food as become so commercial that sometimes they forget the essence of the dishes. But then it said «Taipei Yong Kang Jie» so I think I just set my standards a tad lower.
But the food was decent. In a plaza like that, I expected more people in there because the other Taiwanese food place was closed for the day, but there was only one other table in there the whole time we dined.
And probably because of this, they were able to be more attentive to each dish prepared.
The «da chang bao xiao chang» (chitterling/​stick rice/​sausage) is obviously not how it’s supposed to look, but it tasted good though. They were sliced instead of the usual night market street food, hot-​dog style, but it made sense to slice it up since we were in restaurant and should be using chopsticks and not our hands. :) And I was actually surprised they stuffed the rice in real chitterling and not just that weird film that lots of restaurants use.
Their stinky tofu is actually quite stinky, but it was missing something in the texture of it. It was decent, but definitely not the best.
Beef noodle soup was REALLY flavorful, I don’t know if it’s a good or bad thing. But it was a really condensed soup. Their chicken and pickled veggie noodle soup was good too. I like that their noodles don’t taste like they’ve been sitting in water for ages. Still chewy!
The shaved ice was okay, but the ingredients tasted very homemade. The glutinous balls weren’t the super hard/​chewy ones that they usually have everywhere. They taste like the ones we make at home. And I like that they used the real asian custardy/​pudding/​flan and not just that flavorless puddling/​flan like the stuff they put on top of asian cakes.
They have a very limited menu, and you have to look around the restaurant for posts of some items not listed on the menu.
Overall the experience was okay, the waitress attempted some broken Taiwanese/​Minnan but it was still coherent enough for us to understand, she just had a hard time forming the words fluidly, but no biggie. :)

I’m not related to its owner yet I think this place is awesome!
They have friendly stuffs and delicious food.
My family and I drove all the way to Hao’s Kitchen from OC because we kept seeing their commercials on TV and newspaper and it turned out to be pretty satisfying after finally dining in there.
They did not have too many dishes to choose from, but I love Stinky Tofu hot pot the most among what we have ordered; they put more stuffs in their Stinky Tofu hot pot compare to Boiling Point and they were very delicious!

I think I have the obligation to tell everyone this truth
It’s my first time to eat such an awful, disgusting and fake Taiwanese food in the US. I am from Taiwan and be honest, I have to say this restaurant is not authentically traditional Taiwanese food same as the real one in Taipei. The Chinese name of the restaurant was obviously imitated as the authentic one in Taiwan. Everyone must know the Chinese name very famous in Taipei if people come from Taiwan.
Why did I go there today? Because I saw the commercial on TV that really attracted me and let me miss my hometown. However, the food is totally different from I’d have in Taipei and disappoint me. I agree that someone said if a person gives this place 3 stars or more, he/​she is must either related to the owners or their friends.
Today, I ordered three meals which are Taiwanese meatball ($ 3.5), spicy dan dan noodle ($ 5.5) and Singapore pork rib soup ($ 5.95). First, Taiwanese meatball is okay but the problem is the sauce is too sour and like something rotten. Second, the dan dan noodle is not traditional and it is suitable to be ingredient for other dishes such as beef noodle soup. In my memories, the traditional dan dan noodle is supposed to be very thin like Vietnamese noodle but not flat. In addition, the noodle tastes like noodle and spicy sauce are separate.
Third, I waited for the last meal at least 25 minutes and I thought it needed to take a couple of time to cook and would surprise me. Unfortunately, the soup is tasteless and inside the sliced tofu is really hard to chewy and there are only 3 pieces of rib. I could not stand why all of food I ordered socks and finally complain to the owners. However, the result really freaked me out. They put some MSG in the soup and only said today their chef didn’t proportionately mix the sauce and didn’t do any apologize, that’s all.
Moreover, today I was the first customer in that restaurant during the dinner time. I observed some customers afterward went to the restaurant but after watching the menu, somehow they left. At that moment, I so regretted why I was still in there. I was reluctant to pay off and I swear I will never patronize this restaurant. The restaurant’s reputation is getting worst if they don’t do any improvement.

My lady wanted to treat me to something that was one of her childhood favs. Shaved Ice Asian style… The place she had gone for years had closed so we asked someone and the directed us here. They have now made a very powerful enemy, maybe not so much powerful but irritated by our bamboozling.
The goal was to have shaved ice. The goal is still to try shaved ice because after a single bite my lady looked up at me and asked me not to judge all shaved ice on this because it was horrible. Terrible. Awful.
I hate to waste food. Hate to waste food. I gave it a few more bites, picked around the boba that was disgusting mush and then put my spoon down and asked for the check.
Hao’s kitchen. More like Hao No I will not be returning.

Anyone giving this place above a 3 stars is either related to the owner or a friend of the owner.
Order ed3 dishes today and after a taste I said to myself wow I wished I had gone somewhere else or wow what possessed this owner to open a restaurant. The price is same as all the other taiwanese food places, but the taste is down right horrific.
The chittering rice noodle soup was too salty. The Fried Chicken Rice lacks flavor and the chicken itself was extremely greesy with the stir fried vegetable tasting like left over from the previous meal serving. The rice noodle was forgettable.
Overall, I will not return even if someone offers to buy me the food.
Also, the place was not busy but the waitress was not attentive and the man who appeared to be the owner was busy chatting with his friends during lunch.

Their spicy shabu is my fav.

Went here because almost nothing else in the plaza was open and there was a big «grand opening» sign on it.
I got the beef noodle soup, it was pretty decent. I really liked the broth — it was pretty hearty but refreshing at the same time.
The noodles were normal, they didn’t seem to be the hand-​made kind which I think is much much better. There wasn’t an option for it either, like Mama Liang’s next door.
The beef in it was not that good, unfortunately. It was really hard and chewy — I ended up not eating any of it after attempting to chew it.
My friend got the porkchop with rice combo, and he said it was decent.
The food selection seems to be pretty much the same as other places, and other places have better beef noodle soup so I don’t know if I’ll come here again. I should have checked Unilocal before coming here dammit!

Food is Acceptable. But if u r lookin for some authentic taiwanese food this is not the place. The pork chop rice does not taste like Taiwan pork chop at all. The oyster cake is pretty good. Drink is ok but tapioca in the drink are not chewy and feels a bit under cook.

Not sure what to say. This place is the new cat on the block, and I wish their progress to be well. However, their food and the dining experience as a whole seems lacking, more so that it feels like the people don’t know what they’re doing.
First off, hot tea costs $ 1, and there is no ice in your ice water.
Sauteed vegetables are oily with lots of garlic, though that wasn’t too bad.
Much of the food was under-​seasoned.
The Chinese sausage and shrimp fried rice was good, though.
Had to reorder many dishes because they kept saying the kitchen had none of their ingredients.
The servers are nice, though they don’t really know how to serve. Maybe it’ll just come with experience, but customer service and basic table know-​how is pretty standard. There are too many bodies in the front and not enough cooking in the back. The host seems more schmoozing than anything. It was all kind of like watching a new born calf learning how to walk.
I do wish this place good luck and success, but we’ll see how that goes.

We came here for an improptu weekday lunch. I was told that the beef noodle was decent and they actually have the rice noodle soup that I was looking for all over California. Apparently this place replaced the very unpopular Pizza joint that served overpriced Japanese style pizza. Surrounded by a number of already popular restaurants such as Pa Pa Walk and Liang’s Kitchen, I figured that this place has to have something special to offer in order to survive in the crowded Hilton Plaza.
We ordered the beef noodle ($ 6.75), rice noodle with fried tofu and intestines ($ 7.95, my favorite street food in Taiwan), and the Singapore Pork Rib Soup between the 2 of us. While waiting for food, I surveyed the area: place is clean, with background Taiwanese folk music. Most ppl ordered some type of noodle dishes or hot pot to share, and I was surprised to find that there is cordon bleu pork chop here.
Beef noodle arrives with standard machine made semi-​broad noodles. The soup is not overly salty and broth actually has some depth rather than the usual soy sauce soup that you find around the san gabriel/​montery park area. The beef slices are thick but sinewy and hard to chew. Overall slightly above average, but still nothing to write home about. The rice noodle was a big disappointment with no depth in broth and serious lack of enough fried onions. The tofu on the other hand is soft with good garlicky thick soy sauce. The Singaporean rib soup is warming but again, with slight chinese herby taste but again, nothing special.
Given this is a relatively new restaurant, it still have lots of room for improvement in order to draw crowd from its major Taiwanese food competitors around. Disappointed that none of Taiwanese favorites are kinda up to par, but perhaps the hot pot and cordon bleu porkchop are worth a try, but that would be another visit…