One of my all time favorite Chinese "cuisines" is hot pot. It's comforting, easy and so delicious. Most of the places in Chinatown like 99 Favor Taste are the All You Can Eat variety and while the quality of the food isn't bad, it's also not 5 star either. But it's always satisfying and filling. Janet and I decided to check out a new place that was in the East Village on one of the hottest days (in the 60's) in January. Hot pot is best when it's nice and chilly outside but oh well.
It was completely empty when we got there at 6:30 on a Thursday but it slowly started to fill up afterwards. We were surprised when we opened the menu to learn that this was NOT all-you-can-eat and you had to order each individual ingredient which can add up when you were expecting to go-to town with the ordering. Plus they charge you separately for the broth. WTF - how can you eat hot pot without broth?? They have a few combinations that seemed reasonable so we got the beef combo with came with 2 types of meat, cabbage, enoki mushrooms, tofu, spinach, your choice of dumplings and a salad. We also got a side of fish balls ($8) and rice noodles because it's impossible to eat hot pot without them.
For some reason when they said dumplings, I thought that they would be cooked already but they were hand made raw dumplings that you put in the hot pot - cute but unexpected and frankly I would have preferred to not had the dumplings or salad and had choice of two other ingredients. The salad that came with the combo was totally unnecessary and really just random because most Asians don't really eat salad. The ingredients were definitely of high quality - especially the beef. It was nice and red and you can tell not the usual frozen kind that they just throw at you in an AYCE situation. The fish balls were also not frozen and definitely fresh and hand made. Since they weren't frozen, it had a different texture than the usual kind we're used to - I didn't mind it but Janet wasn't a huge fan of it. While we were disappointed that we couldn't keep ordering, we were actually pretty full by the time we finished everything and probably wouldn't have ended up ordering much more anyways. The best part of the entire meal was the broth at the end after it's had all the veggies and meat soaking in there for a while. I could have drank it by the bowl full.
Overall, it was a totally fine experience and I can see why they charge a bit more because the quality and freshness of the ingredients are a bit better. But it wasn't that much better or mind blowing that I would stop going to Favor Taste or any of the other AYCE places. The whole point of hot pot is to over-indulge and enjoy yourself and it's kind of hard to do when you're paying a higher price or an experience that you know you can get for cheaper 15 minutes away. Plus I don't know if it's because it's not in Chinatown and didn't have that slightly seedy Chinatown flare to it, but it seemed to cater more to non-Asians in a way that made it not so authentic. Total bill: $45/pp with tax and tip
Photo Credit: Yelp
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