Highly Anticipated Chinese Restaurants Reschedule Openings at Westfield UTC

Eater readers eagerly awaiting the arrival of two acclaimed Chinese restaurants to San Diego will have to exercise patience. Both were anticipated to launch this summer but are reportedly behind schedule, so it’s looking like we’ll have to wait until this fall for HaiDiLao and Qin West Noodle to open at Westfield UTC.

Currently in construction next to the Zara store, HaiDiLao is a high-profile hot pot chain — China’s largest with over at 900 locations worldwide — that is well-known for its Sichuan-style hot pot. While the food garners good reviews, the restaurant has made a name for itself by offering showy and unusual extras and amenities to enhance the HaiDiLao dining experience, from providing in-house manicures to extending seat-filling giant plushies to solo diners.

Meanwhile, slotting in between Eureka and Veggie Grill is Qin West Noodle, a popular restaurant with existing outposts in Los Angeles, Arcadia, and Irvine and a menu that’s mainly centered around dishes from two regions of China where Qin West’s owners, the Kou family, have lived. Representing the north are Shanxi specialties like liang pi, or cold noodles, and a lamb-based bread porridge called lamb paomo and hailing from the southern area of Guangxi is luosifen, a strongly-flavored rice noodle soup traditionally made with a snail and pork broth. The restaurant shared that it’ll be introducing two exclusive dishes here: a red beef noodle soup and fenzheng rou, five-spiced pork steamed with rice powder. And a rep for Westfield UTC says that even more Asian food is coming to the mall soon.

• All Coming Attractions [ESD]