Joypot — Restaurant in New York

This place feels like an actual scam. A big sign outside says all you can eat lunch is $29.99 and dinner $39.99. It’s like 5:08 pm, fine, I guess dinner time but some info on the cutoff times would be helpful.

We walked in and they ignored us for a good long while before a waitress dragged herself to our table to say “use the QR code.” She didn’t explain that it’s not even just a menu, you actually have to order off your phone. Ok fine but tell us that? Explain how it works, because it’s confusing AF.

With much difficulty and confusion, I put in our entire order and then had a question, at which point I tried to flag the waitress down, but she was sitting at the hostess stand on her phone ignoring me. I physically walked ALL the way over before she even noticed I had been waving and walking toward her, at which point I asked for help with the menu and asked why the broth said $15.99 if it was all you can eat. As we’re having this convo, SHE clicks the button to put in my order with the kitchen.

She tells me at that point that that’s the broth charge, so dinner is actually $39.99 per person PLUS $15.99 and ALSO tax and tip (for what?). I asked her if there was any a la carte option at least, since we were two people and were only ordering a few things, she said no.

At that point I start explaining everything to my boyfriend who was out of earshot of all this and isn’t totally fluent in English — I wanted to check in and see if he was ok with the prices being so high.

As I am still talking to him, THAT’s when the waitress finally comes to our actual table and starts asking me repeatedly whether or not to cancel our order with the kitchen. (Again, she pressed the button). So now I can’t functionally communicate with my boyfriend because this waitress is in my ear asking if she should cancel our order. We finally agree to leave, she cancels the order, and I tell her “sorry” but she just scoffs at me.

I walked out annoyed at the pricing structure and feeling bad for inconveniencing a waitress who’s stuck with a crappy job, but looking back the next day and thinking about all the opportunities she had to explain their system or provide any kind of service, I think she was at fault as well.

We had a great dinner, with great service, at Court Square Diner instead and it was less than...

This place is minimum $40 per person for dinner, then $16 more if you want 2 broths- we ended up spending $70 each (with tip) for an average meal in an average ambiance. It's on us, but we didn't see that the only option was "all you can eat". We arrived in the dark and didn't see the sign outside, and it was not clear in the online ordering app. In fact, the only totaled items on the bill in the app were the broths and the soft drinks, no mention of the $80 base price for two people. As long as diners know that, I would say my food was delicious even if it's pricey (though my friend ordered the beef tallow broth at minimum spice level and literally could not eat it). It's a classic hotpot experience with music videos blaring on the TV. The people who work here are very nice, but we had a bunch of questions about the food, ordering, and the bill, and they didn't speak or understand any English, so unless you've been there before or speak their languages, you might have trouble navigating. In summary, if you're craving hot pot in the area and have some extra money to spend, it's a good spot, but there are much cheaper and nicer places in Chinatown...

First hotpot experience and I’ll never be back to this place.

Our waitress made us feel as though our questions were bothersome. That alone made me never want to go back. This was our first experience, so we had no clue how any of this went.

She took us to our table, and that’s it. Never checked on us or asked us if we had any questions. This service was BARE minimum, the worst I’ve had in a long time. That’s definitely not what you expect when you’re spending over $100 for a meal.

Now, the food. We got the spicy bone broth and the tomato broth, neither of which we enjoyed. Maybe that was just personal preference.

It’s nice that this place is all you can eat, but the food wasn’t enjoyable… and I only kept eating so that they wouldn’t charge us for having too much food left over.

Typically we tip 20% or higher. Due to the lack of service we left a 10% tip. The waitress TOLD us to make the tip higher because it was too low. Obviously, that didn’t end well.

Honestly, with a 4.8 rating, I thought this would be a better experience than it was. We’ll never be back.

This isn’t...