No.9 Alley Hotpot — Restaurant in Seattle

Didn't document much of the experience to show visually, but will write up my general thoughts. Opted for the AYCE option and felt pretty meh the entire time. There are so many AYCE hot pots around here so there was a bit of a mental comparison as well.

There's a medium parking lot that will likely has spots, this place wasn't too busy. Enter and get seated, the booths are a bit on the shorter end as in they have additional parts that stay low and you'll probably knee some hard surface. Can't speak much about the tables, I'm sure they're better. Regardless, it didn't ruin the experience but I did want to point that out in case deciding between a booth and table was a thought. You get your dishes in saran wrap, maybe for presentation? Anyways, after unveiling you may find the dishes a bit dirty as if they were hastily ran through a dishwasher and then wrapped up.

Right now (during the summer? pandemic? not sure) if your bill before taxes is $60 or more, you get plum or watermelon juice for the table. If you spend even more, there's other bonuses that I forgot, might've been some wagyu? Anyways, we opted for the watermelon juice and it was refreshing, but not what we came for so won't be factored into the rating too much. It was pulpy with bits of seeds so you're made aware that actual watermelon is being blended. With that in mind, you probably know what to expect if you've ever had watermelon.

They have a sauce bar but it's pretty pricey. It's something like a hefty $3 or $4 per person in your party. If one person wants sauce, the entire table will be charged. Honestly, not interested in that and if I have to rely on sauce to make the food taste good, it's probably not the best anyways.

We opted for a half and half pot and were charged an extra $6 or so for this. Other hot pot places don't have additional charges for splitting the pot unless you order a specialty broth. Here, you get charged if your party has different tastes. That's a bummer and means you either have to be selective with your party or selective with your pot.

One pro is that they have a wide array of options that you might not see elsewhere. Food is nothing amazing but it's not completely low quality either. I wouldn't choose to come back on my own, but if others were planning on it, I would tag along because it wasn't completely awful. Food was fine just questionable practices...

Food/Taste/Flavor: 5/5 - ordered the AYCE bone broth. Didn't get the sauce since the broth was very flavorful. They were out of quail egg :(. Good: lamb, fatty beef belly, pork belly, fried fish cake, beef tripe, beef artery, napa cabbage, tong ho (arugula), shiitake mushroom, king oyster mushroom, and fresh fish paste that you scoop into the broth and make fish balls (more like lumps in our case :p)

Meh: choice ribeye and chuck beef were okay but not as good as the fatty meats in the broth. The fish tofu was salty and too big of a serving for the two of us.

Ambience: 4/5 - mostly Jay Chou songs playing. Nice and spacious but you can tell some furniture is older. A bit odd that the plates, bowls, and utensils are wrapped in plastic... feels like not enough customers come through or they leave things sitting out

Service: 3/5 - might be a language issue but not much was said or explained just that there was a QR code to scan after asking if it was our first time. Wasn't too difficult to figure out but we were expecting a little bit more details. When we asked for a fork, the female server just stared blankly and then walked away muttering fork. Think she had to ask someone else what we were asking for

Value for price: 4/5 - a bit pricier but good food overall. They're a bit inconsistent in their cuts for the protein and the serving size of the...

I enjoyed this place a lot. The food is pretty good quality for the price. I couldn't even go for seconds when we did our first round of AYCE. The reason for the lower rating despite the good food is the absolute cold shoulder and lack of communication. This was my first time here, so I wasn't really sure how to go about ordering and everyone at the table let the staff know as much and they just directed us to the QR code. It worked, but it was a little difficult to navigate and nobody walked us through it. They also didn't mention the sauce bar, we just explored it on our own. They gave us plenty of water refills, but never asked about bringing more food. We also figured out how to pay by watching other people, it was never explained. I also had to request that they bring us the beer we ordered after about 30 minutes and then watching them serve somebody else first who arrived later. I like what they offer here, but it's probably another place where you have to be obviously asian to get better service. I say obviously because I am Chinese, but don't...