I have no idea why this place is called Favor Taste vs. Flavor Taste but that doesn't really matter here. What matters is that it's an awesome, all you can eat, and clean hot pot establishment in Chinatown. While it's not on the level of the kind of hot pot places I've had in Asia, it's definitely the best one I've been to so far in NYC. For $22, you can get unlimited 2 hour hot pot or for $26 you can get unlimited Korean BBQ or for $31 you can get both. Since Janet and I are gluttons for good food, we went with the hot pot and Korean BBQ combination. The menu is pretty extensive in terms of ingredients that you can order - they do have other more expensive ingredients that you can pay extra for, but you can order more than enough good stuff from the inclusive menu to make a filling meal. We went a bit crazy and ended up ordering over 20 different items which included: beef, shrimp, squid, spinach, white cabbage, enoki mushrooms, tofu, fish balls, fish tofu, silken tofu, rice noodles, fillet beef, beef with pepper, mussels, steak ribs, and the seafood pancake. You get a choice of broth and we opted for the pig bone broth (the pot is split into 2, so you can each order different kinds).
The food comes out almost immediately and you get to work cooking everything immediately. There is an extensive sauce station where you can mix and match your own sauces - they have everything you would need: soy sauce, chili sauce, hoisin sauce, sesame oil, garlic, scallions, cilantro, etc. The ingredients were pretty decent quality - I wouldn't say there were of the highest quality a la Kobe beef but they totally got the job done. I did think that the thin slices of beef for the hot pot was a bit fattier than I would like, so that was my one compliant. The waitress kindly cooks your BBQ stuff for you, cuts it up for you and puts it on a plate. We gorged on the hot pot and even ordered seconds of some of the ingredients (although in retrospect - there really is no reason to order 2 of anything there because you'll just get super stuffed and regret it later) but my favorites were the enoki mushrooms, the rice noodles (although I wish they had the wider rice noodles instead of the thin kind) and the fish balls. What I love about hot pot are all the flavors that mix together in the broth. I wasn't a huge fan of the squid but as Janet pointed out, I probably shouldn't have let it sit in the pot for so long as it started to get old and too chewy. As for the Korean BBQ, the meat was tender and had some great marinate on there. I really loved the mussels, they are the plumb green New Zealand kind - although they only give you 4 per order. In all honesty, while I did enjoy the BBQ, next time I go, I would probably skip it and focus on the hot pot unless I was with a large group. If you're only going with 1 or 2 other people, it's just way too much food to deal with when you order both options. Also if you are a vegetarian, there do have a pretty long list of vegetables you can either grill on the BBQ or cook in the hot pot. The only thing I would say is that it's usually the fat of the meat or the flavor in the seafood that really brings out the flavor in the broth, so if you did a strictly vegetable order, it may not be as flavorful but it's still do-able.
The service was quite pleasant and they were very nice (if a bit slow - we had to ask for our Diet Cokes a few times and to get my credit card back) for a Chinatown place. If you check in, you get free ice cream, but I just couldn't even go there. Also, apparently if it's your birthday, you eat for free. Sweet! I definitely enjoyed my experience there and if you have a big group of people, this would be a great fun activity to do. Total bill: $88 for 2 people including tax, tip and 10 Diet Cokes
Photo Credit: Yelp
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