Uniboil

Uniboil, a popular hot pot chain from Los Angeles, recently opened a location in San Diego. The restaurant serves individual Chinese-style hot pots and aims for a higher quality experience by using ingredients like Kurobuta pork and certified Angus beef from Snake River Farms.

The restaurant is currently in soft opening. It replaced Beauty Hunan Restaurant and in fact the signage for Beauty Hunan is still up, with the Uniboil logo displayed on a small poster on the restaurant window.

The staff was helpful in explaining the options and what they are most known for. There are six soup bases to choose from, 4 proteins, as well as three preset pots.

Their signature hot pot is Szechuan Pepper numb Pork Feet, which is not something I’ve seen before. Pork feet is not a favorite of mine, so even though I was curious, I decided to pass on it but we did order the appetizer version.

Uniboil flowering tea

For the soft opening, the flowering tea is complimentary, so we each got one. The sweetened tea is made with hibiscus, producing a lovely dark shade of red. It was slightly tart, reminding me a little plum juice. I found it quite refreshing and it helped cool the burn from the spicy hot soup base.

Kurobuta Pork with Szechuan Pepper soup base

I enjoyed the numbing spice from the szechuan pepper soup base and there was a generous amount of pork slices in the pot. I thought the soup was quite flavorful but a little too spicy and oily for drinking. It really helped to flavor all the ingredients, but I did miss sipping my hot pot soup.

Angus Beef with Tomato Hot Soup

The tomato and szechuan pepper are the most popular broths. The tomato broth was lighter, not spicy, and had a very strong tomato flavor. I enjoyed sipping on it but we did miss the spice and Mr. K ended up taking some of my broth to mix into his.

All pots come with a choice of vermicelli noodles or rice. I chose noodles and Mr. K chose rice.

Szechuan Pepper numb Pork Knuckle

As I mentioned above, I’ve never really cared for pork feet, though my siblings love it. I do occasionally eat it, but I’m quite picky about the ones I’ll eat. I was definitely curious about the version here and decided we should at least try the appetizer version.

And I’m very glad we did. The braised pork skin was wonderfully gelatinous and the seasonings and spices had penetrated all the way through the skin.

Overall, we had a pretty good first meal here. While there have been a lot of hot pot restaurants suddenly opening in San Diego, UniBoil does manage to stand out with its Szechuan hot pot base, pork feet, and offerings of Angus beef and Kurobuta pork.

Menu:

Uniboil
8199 Clairemont Mesa Blvd, San Diego, CA 92111