hotbox — Restaurant in Birmingham

Not Asian inspired. The food was good but this is American cuisine. It was enjoyable but I selected this spot and walked here and bought multiple things because I was interested in their Asian inspired offerings. This is another example of southern chefs taking Japanese dishes and completely white washing them. I ordered the burger which was delicious but just a burger, perhaps it was not intended to be Japanese influenced. The soba bowl however was disappointing. The soba noodles were cut into small pieces which fundamentally goes against the tradition of soba noodles which should be kept long and slurped. Much harder to eat when they are cut up. Sounds silly but it’s an essential part of eating a soba dish. The chicken add on was completely unseasoned. Like zero seasoning whatsoever. Lastly, it was 50% broccoli, the tiny little freezer bag brocolli that had no flavor and tasted frozen. Come here for the vibes and a great burger but do not come here for Asian flavor cause you won’t find it - at least not in the...

Hotbox is one of my favorite places to grab a quick, normally very good meal. I've been there dozens of times. Unfortunately, tonight they had a whole new crew and it showed. We ordered, then went to grab a drink inside Parkside, which took maybe 10m. After going back out and walking around for 10m in front of the window while the crew chatted (I was alone out there), someone finally came within range so I could ask about my food. They found my order, discussed and settled on "someone probably claimed your food - it happens sometimes". An obvious excuse for having lost the ticket after we ordered. So they made it "again", which took about 15m. As I'm very familiar with the menu, I'd say the food was pretty good but definitely not up to their previous standards. I know people make mistakes but I don't like being given a lame excuse after being ignored. There are too many choices in Avondale for me to...

We were so excited to check it out after reading write-ups in Garden and Gun and Southern Living. The web site provided the food menu but was otherwise ambiguous about a drink menu so we actually thought it was possibly BYOB. We arrived to find that the airstream had to be accessed by entering a bar. We had our toddler with us but presumed we would just be walking through the bar to get to the outdoor space behind which holds the airstream. The bartender looked at us like we had three heads and rudely demanded that we leave and further snapped that the restaurant had been part of the bar for “a few years” as if it imply that we should have known. We were simply out of town visitors looking for good food in a kid-friendly environment. Would be nice for the restaurant and/or BAR to make this restriction clear on their web site...or to at least be more kind when potential patrons...