**** UniBoil has closed
It finally feels like winter around these parts. Which means that I'm back in hot pot mode. Starting with Uniboil. I actually first saw Uniboil during one of my trips to Rowland Heights last year in Hong Kong Plaza (in fact its in the 9th photo in that post). Uniboil opened in the old Beauty Hunan location back in August. Sheesh, that place only lasted half a year or so and its predecessor Szechuan Taste only lasted a couple of years. Intrepid Hot Pot lover Kirbie visited right after opening, before the actual signage for the shop went up. I'd thought about it, but man, August was just too hot for me to have hot pot.
So I waited until the weather cooled down, right around the end of December to make my first visit.
Uniboil is based in Monterey Park and has locations in Monterey Park, Rowland Heights, and Davis. The restaurant claims to use no MSG and source most of their proteins from Snake River Farms and the broth base is made from chicken.
Much like other hot pot shops of the same style; there are several "bases" and you choose the protein.
There are also a couple of featured item and various noodle selections…..which I decided to avoid once I saw another table's dish come out. For a place that touts it's quality of product; they served the noodles dish with instant ramen type noodles…..
The item that caught my attention was the Ma-la Pig Feet Soup (lunch price – $14.99).
I got this with the vermicelli noodles, which was a rather small portion. There were three good sized pig's feet in the soup; which were nice and gelatinous, not overly tough, and tasted pretty good. The rest of the items in the hop pot were routne; one lonely clam, two slices of kamabuko, two pieces of surimi, a whole lot of cabbage, a slice of corn, and the item I enjoyed the most (next to the pig's feet) frozen tofu. The broth, while on the salty side, had a nice numbing-spice to it. I just needed a touch of hot bean sauce to adjust the flavor a bit.
This was the best item I had on my visits by far.
Of course I returned a few weeks later. Calvin had recommended the Sate broth with Lamb ($12.99 – lunch). I also ordered the Spicy Lotus Root ($4.99), which wasn't very good.
Not enough spice, way too much sesame oil, uneven cutting technique. Definitely not worth five bucks.
I wasn't particularly enamored with the Sate Broth either. I even added on additional Frozen Tofu ($2.50.).
Can something be both salty and bland at the same time? Perhaps one-dimensional might be the appropriate description. I added at least a quarter cup of sate to this in addition to the hot bean sauce….which helped, but made things even more salty. The thinly sliced lamb was nice and gamey, but other than being hot this wasn't very satisfying at all.
On a rather chilly evening, I decided on a tie-breaker visit.
I was fascinated by the "Healthy Tomato Hot Soup", that I decided to try that with Kurobuta Pork ($13.99 – dinner) with Extra Frozen Tofu ($2.50).
The pork was sliced very thin and I wasn't able to separate the slices. It was also too lean and turned into a white, dry piece of pork.
Man, if I thought the sate was salty and nothing else, this was even more salty and had even less flavor….just a hint of tomato. Perhaps I'm just not lucky with things described as "healthy" on the menu? I added like half the container of sate and a ton of the hot bean sauce, just to be able to consume this. I took most of it home and the Missus had one spoon of it and told me to dump the broth….which is interesting since we hate to waste food. Hey, but at least this time there were two fishballs in the broth versus only one last time. 
To be perfectly honest, I prefer the soup at Tasty Pot. And with all of these hot pot places open or opening, I think I've had enough Uniboil (I always accidentally call the place Uni-Brow for some reason) for now.
Uniboil
8199 Clairemont Mesa Blvd
San Diego, CA 92111
Hours:
Open Daily 11am – 10pm