Megan L.
Yelp
Rating: 3.5/5
Austin was in need of more hot pot options, so I'm glad that Happy Lamb reopened. It used to be on campus when I was still in college, but it closed quickly. My friend and I came on their soft opening day, and we thought that coming at 8PM would avoid the crowd... unfortunately, that's what the entirety of Austin thought as well. We waited almost 2 hours, so there were a ton of ingredients that were gone by the time it was our turn.
The space is really nice and clean, and the booths are incredibly comfortable. They were really busy, but it wasn't that difficult to get help or ask for another order. They have a self-serve soda station and strawberry ice cream freezer. You can also help yourself to hot tea. Vegetables, fish balls, and non-meat ingredients can all be grabbed at the self-service buffet bar, but I'm honestly not a fan of these kinds of features at AYCE hot pot because it feels slightly unsanitary and everyone's poked around for the best ingredients and left the scraps behind.
My friend and I opted for the premium meat option, so you could pick three broths. We chose the classic bone and mala spicy broths. I thought the broth was just okay; it's not standout, but at this point, I usually judge hot pot places by 1) quality of meat and 2) quality/taste of broth. The meat is pretty high quality, and it comes out nicely on platters. You can pick small and large portions of meat so you're never over ordering. Our waitress was pretty standoffish, but she got our orders in and came by to check in on us once. Because it was also near the end of the day, my friend and I had to wait a while for sauce bar ingredients like cilantro to be refilled. I noticed some of the bowls and plates that are set out to be grabbed weren't clean, so that was another -0.5 from my rating.
Overall, it was an okay experience. The long wait is expected given there were more than 30+ parties ahead of us, but they did their best to get everyone in and out as fast as possible. In terms of Austin hot pot, Little Sheep is definitely the best. I can't help but think about other popular chains and how the same price would've been the standard menu price AND there would've been a ton of other appetizer and ingredient options. I recommend going next door to grab boba if you have a long wait!