Hai Di Lao Somerset Set Lunch Review: Excellent Food and Service at a Great Price!

Hai Di Lao is now offering a promotion for set lunch at its Somerset branch. At $15.80, it includes a choice of meat and vegetable platter. This Hai Di Lao set lunch is only available during lunch time from Mondays to Fridays. This time, we tried the Iberico Pork Set and the US Beef slices set at Hai Di Lao Somerset…

There is usually a long queue at Hai Di Lao. Even during weekday lunch, it was no different. We waited for about 30 minutes and were given some snacks and drinks while we waited…

The drink was winter melon and the snack pack consisted of a variety of tidbits. You could ask for seconds and thirds if you wanted to. Once the table was ready, we were shown to our seats. As it is still the pandemic period, we were seated next to each other, to ensure that we maintain safe distancing from the other tables around us.

Hai Di Lao has now automated its ordering process. Even for the set menu, all you have to do is to click and select your meats accordingly. As you can see, if you ordered the meats by itself, it would have been rather expensive. Hence, the lunch time deal is not too bad at all. Just that you’d still need to pay for the soup, dips and drinks (which are all unlimited) if you want to. For the soup, we chose the three delicacy soup (full of ingredients inside) for about $20. It is also non-spicy. 😅

This time, we had the Iberico Pork and Beef Set which also includes quite a substantial amount of vegetables…

In addition to the 2 lunch sets, we also ordered the fried tofu skin ($6.50) that goes so well with hot pots – a quick dip and you’re done; as well as the meat & chives dumplings ($4) and signature mashed shrimp ($11.5)

Love it that we had an assortment of vegetables that includes black fungus, mushrooms and vegetables. Made the lunch set well worth it. Next, it was time to choose the dipping sauce…

The dipping sauces at Hai Di Lao are not included in the price. However, everyone orders it since it is refillable and the signature Hai Di Lao Sauce actually comes with minced beef!

As this was our first time at Hai Di Lao (can you believe it?!), we ordered the Hai Di Lao Sauce as well as the Sesame Sauce and were happy with our orders. Another thing to note is that you will have to add 1 ladle full of the soup to the Haidilao sauce. 2 ladles would be too much and the sauce becomes too watery. The chili in the Hai Di Lao sauce can be quite spicy too. Be careful when you go for those big bites drenched in the dipping sauce!

You can also order unlimited side dishes as well (which also comes at a small cost) but were thoroughly enjoyable…

We thoroughly enjoyed the seaweed. It was so crunchy and well seasoned! The beancurd skin was delicious too. To save big while dining at Haidilao, we’d recommend ordering the side dishes which can be filling as well!

We have been told about the amazing service at Hai Di Lao. Yet, when we were there, we were still pretty much surprised by how excellent the service is. For instance, we were asked several times about whether we needed more side dishes and whether we needed to top up our soup. When it was time to try out the signature mashed prawn, the waitress was able to professionally place them all into hot pot – all in a flash…

Towards the end of our meal, we were also asked if we wanted more fruits and desserts. We ordered rock melon as well as more soya beancurd – which tasted like Lao Ban Dou Hua. Throughout the whole dining experience of about 2 hours, we did not have to leave our seats as all our needs were meticulously taken care of by the waiting staff.

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Conclusion

Although dining at Hai Di Lao is rather expensive for us, we realised that with the Hai Di Lao set lunch promotion, you can still dine rather well and enjoy the awesome service at Haidilao. Now that we know that the hot pot itself comes with ingredients, perhaps we’d order 1 lunch set, dipping sauce, side dishes and the soup which would be more than enough for 2 to share. This would work out to only about $30 per person, inclusive of desserts! If you have been to Hai Di Lao, let us know more of your expert tips in our comments section below!

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