V-YAN Hot Pot & BBQ — Restaurant in Parsippany-Troy Hills

This was the first time I ate at an establishment that has this "cook-it-yourself" concept. Therefore, I wasn't entirely sure how the ordering process works, let alone what ingredients are traditional for this dish (this was my first time eating hotpot, so I was pretty much ordering out of the dark hoping it would taste good).

This led me to the first issue: the waitresses don't help you AT ALL. Typically, you can ask for recommendations, and waiters would happily share with customers what they like or what is normal to order; and considering that this is hotpot, you would expect waiters to be eager to help less experienced customers. Unfortunately, my waitress always seemed to be in some massive urban rush to do something and was prompting us to order as if an emergency occurred. She also did not speak English effectively, and wore a mask, so we could hardly understand or hear what she was saying. When I asked what she recommends, she blankly stared at me and as I read ingredients out loud she kept saying "oh yeah, [insert ingredient name here]," as if that was actually a recommendation. This isn't helpful for new customers. At the very least, the restaurant should disclose that this is a place better suited for people that have experience making and eating hotpot.

On a positive note, the food went out INCREDIBLY quickly--within five minutes of ordering. And now, on a negative note, the food was dropped off, and then we were left to our own devices. No instruction on how long to cook the food; no instruction on what ingredients to put in first; no instruction on how long to cook the meat. We weren't even told about the sauce station in the back, which is a big detail to leave out; nor were we informed of the complementary ice cream station. It wasn't like I was an illiterate and degenerate blind person--I eventually figured everything out--but customer service and instruction is important. This is especially the case when we are having to cook RAW MEAT in a boiling pot of broth. We aren't experts. It would also seem like a paramount concern for the restaurant to iterate how long to cook the meat at least. There was none of that, so, again, left to our own devices.

The quality of the food was quite nice with no obvious problems. After cooking everything--likely FAR beyond the extent at which it should have been cooked--we were pleased with how everything tasted! We also managed to figure out how to properly consume hotpot essentially as a happy accident.

Throughout us eating, our waitress never checked in. We had to wait for another waiter to go around asking for final orders. In need of napkins, one of my acquaintances asked for them, to which a minute later the waiter went incognito on us, putting the napkins on the table and then vanishing in her inexplicable urgency and haste. We didn't even realize she gave us the napkins until we saw them on the side of the table!

Overall, for the cooking, I think this was a nice experience that is worth trying. It's a cool concept and it allows you to really experiment with what you like.

As for other concerns, the sanitation of the restaurant was abhorrent. Chopsticks and utensils were left on the floor from the prior party that ate at our table; and it was glaringly obvious that the tables were not cleaned. The cabinets in the sauce station were also dirty and messy, like they haven't been cleaned up in hours. Lastly, and worst of all, the scooper for the ice cream was absolutely grotesque--uncleaned, sitting in a pool of milky and murky fluid, and uncleaned for hours. How does a restaurant expect us to use this thing!? I was worried I was going to get some kind of food-borne illness from using it, which thank the heavens that didn't happen. It seems like this place doesn't even bother cleaning utensils repeatedly, which is a serious issue.

This, along with the silent-unhelpful-ninja service, is what created this two-star rating. The food was good, but it was in complete absence of adequate service and in a dirty eating environment. Will likely not be...

Hot Pot Buffet - $22 for all you can eat shabu shabu. Wow!! I was shocked to find this out in west jersey, literally, I have to always drive out to NYC to get something like this. The price is so reasonable and it is even better than NYC since this place also offers seafood options and even the 99 Favors in Chinatown New York doesn't offer that!!!

Alright so I picked the Original Soup base, the mild or medium spice ones are honesty great flavors but there are SOOO many peppers in it that it just makes it annoying to eat around and ugh, just a pain to deal with. The original comes out milky white, you can add or adjust the flavor from the sauce bar - there is soy, hot sauce, LOTS of options. Otherwise plain is great too!! The meats and veggies as you cook will make the broth super flavorful and amazing!

Sauce bar has huge variety, my favorite mixes include sesame, peanut, oyster, soy, garlic bits, scallion bits, hot sauce and a little soy sauce. Of course I always mix something different every time but I absolutely love peanut and sesame sauce with my meats and veggie.

Let's preface that you have to use a different set of utensils to handle the raw food, and then use the provided laddle to get the food out of the boiling hot broth but just be careful the food and broth is always boiling HOT!!!

Alright MUST eats include the lamb, fatty beef, pork, oysters, clams, enoki mushrooms, fish fillet, fuzhou ball and a carb (udon or ramen). The raw thin sliced meats that are the best are literally the lamb, fatty beef and pork. These only take 35 second to cook (roughly) then you can take right out of the broth can be "flavored" with any of the dipping sauces or your own mix from the sauce bar.The oysters and clams are just great but watch the oysters cause they cook fast, the clams you don;t have to worry about the cooking time as much, just make sure its open before you eat it.

Enoki mushrooms is a standard that you must have at shabu shabu, if you don't like mushrooms I feel bad for you but honestly these are the best!! Also the Fuzhou fish ball is great, the outside is a white fish ball mix and INSIDE is literally a meat ball - its the BEST!!! Dip this into any sauce or just have it plain, you can't go wrong! The fish fillet is great for me, but its not for everything. its a plain white fish with great texture and bite, but its really a fish fillet.

End to this meal is ALWAYS always a carb of some sort to kind of soak up the broth and just make your own version of ramen with that great broth you have made from all the things you have been making through dinner. Highly recommend walking over for a bowl, cook your noodles and then have it with some soup and some left over meat or veggies!!

Highly recommend experience and this location! Will be...

It felt like a torture session...

So my husband and I love hot pot it is one of our favorite things to go out for and we make it regularly at home. We got the hot pot and BBQ special since we haven't done make your own Korean grill before.

We got seated, it smells great we are super excited to check out the menu and relax while we chatted about our upcoming time off and what we wanted to do. Unfortunately nothing was enjoyable or relaxing from that point forward except for our lovely waitress. There is absolutely pounding loud techno music that is very fast paced. Other waitress come up and demands what we want after having just opened the menu it flusters my husband so bad he starts rapid firing what he wants and flipping through the menu and not even waiting for me to order. I eventually get to order ask about what is gluten free since I have celiac we are given conflicting info from what I got earlier over the phone but the other lovely waitress is great and checks on the items.

Most of the BBQ stuff is gluten so when it comes we separate the grill surface and keep half for gluten and half for gluten free so I can stay safe. I am starting to get a bit fatigue with the music I can hardly hear my partner so we don't get to talk and the music is making us just inhale the food at a pace as fast as the music. Great for marketing and moving people out but awful for ambiance. Broth is buffet quality but not anything special. So we have stuff on the grill and soup boiling and for some reason a waitress comes over takes all of the BBQ meats and puts it on the grill for us?!?!? Like either we are going to slow or they want the plates idk but it felt super rude and got gluten over everything so I couldn't eat any of it. The sauce burned and blew smoke into my eyes the whole time making me cough and my eyes tear up. Eventually we were able to get another grill surface but it felt very adversarial. We either got way too much hands on help or couldn't get help at all when we needed it. The food was either very underseasoned or too salty to eat. We rapidly finished, completely forgot about dessert, tipped our decent waitress heavily and both stepped out feeling absolutely shell shocked.

It was far from the relaxing fun lunch we were expecting, it was like getting prisoner rations in a cage of death...