YI Hot Pot & Sushi & BBQ — Restaurant in Solon

Very new restaurant in Solon, and as far as I know, the first of its concept on the east side. There are three main elements to the restaurant: Sushi, Hot Pot, and BBQ. Sushi can be ordered a la carte. The Hot Pot and BBQ are all you can eat (You have a choice, or you can have both for a bit more) and include a small sushi bar with a few decent options (They were offering only rolls while I was there; I’m not sure if there might be anything else). The sushi was good, especially for an all-you-can-eat bar setup.

The tables are constructed specifically for Hot Pot and BBQ: A standard table for four will have one sunken burner in front of each seat, with a sunken (electric) BBQ skillet in the center. Just be careful – There’s not much knee room.

If you’ve been to a Mongolian BBQ, you have a good basis of what happens to start. For the Hot Pot, you have a choice of several broths, which they will bring to the table and set into the burner in front of you. For the BBQ, they will turn on the center BBQ skillet. You then go to various stations to pick up meat and vegetables to cook either in the broth or on the skillet. With the broth, you end up with a bit of a soup. With the BBQ, they suggest wrapping the meat in lettuce leaves (Offered with the other ingredients). There is a special section for the BBQ where you can get slices of meat, wings, ribs, and other meats. You do have access to one of the other areas for more choices of vegetables; I suggest sticking with anything sliced thin – The thicker things just don’t cook well in the BBQ (They are fine in the broth).

There is a “sauce bar” where you can pick up various ingredients and sauces and mix them as you see fit. They do offer some combination suggestions. For the Hot Pots, it’s generally for dipping. I found the BBQ meat didn’t have much marinade (They did have one marked marinaded, but it also was light on flavor). In the end, I found it better to cook the meat with some sauce – That worked very well, but was a bit messy.

My wife and I had the BBQ – I was thinking it would be close to the Korean BBQ I have had in the past, but there were no Korean BBQ or sauces, and the only Banchan element was Kimchi. I have had Hot Pot elsewhere, and their version looked good – I will probably have it next time (And I will be back).

We arrived at about 5:30 on a Saturday night, and it was about 20% full. By the time we left at 7:00, it was full, with the few workers running around to make sure everyone had what they needed. They probably could have used an extra person to help, but as a recently opened restaurant, I cut them some slack. It was fine, and we didn’t wait too long.

As I mentioned, I will be back, and this will probably be one of my go-to places – I’m glad to see it open.

They have take out (Sushi), and do accept...

I'm giving 2 stars only because I feel bad for the new local business. It really should be 1 start.

My first time eating here earlier today and I had high hopes. I normally don't leave bad reviews, but felt very misled by current rating and other reviews, which led me to visit today. I've been to a number of Korean BBQ and Hot Pot restaurants before and many of them were very good and at similar price point...  unfortunately, haven't found any good ones in the Cleveland area. And so I had hopes for this restaurant.

First, the service really really really sucked. A total of only 3 tables were occupied in the whole restaurant and it would seem that one waiter/waitress should be able to handle this load with no problem considering you take raw food from the buffett and then cook it yourself.

However, our waitress disappeared for over 30 minutes at some point.  It felt like pulling teeth to get someone to change BBQ paper (similar to parchment paper) after it was all burnt... I found where they store the extra paper and oil, and literally had to do it myself. My son ordered a bowl of rice when we sat down and the rice was brought out when we were all finished and already asked for the check.

The food was just ok at best. The grill doesn't get hot enough to sear the meat so it could get some color and the end result was gray, very bland meat with no flavor and boiled-like texture. I asked to increase the heat, but was told there is only 1 setting. Seafood was ok, but did not seem very fresh. Vegetables were ok. Desert was a joke... it mostly consisted of chocolate pudding and something that resembled rice cakes.

All in all, I now understand why only 3 tables had customers at dinner time. It was totally not worth $34 per person. Unfortunately I will...

We greatly enjoyed our dinner at YI! Half of our party wanted hot pot and half wanted sushi, which turned out not to be a problem at all. Unlike some other hot pot restaurants where everyone needs to order the same thing, at YI each person can individually choose hot pot, BBQ, both, or something else.

The buffet for the hot pot and BBQ was quite respectable, with a decent variety of beef, pork, poultry, organ meat, seafood, tofu, etc, as well as a slightly smaller assortment of vegetables and noodles. All of the food was clearly fresh. The condiment bar had over 3 dozen different sauces to mix and match for dipping (including 5 different chili oils/pastes - alas, none were spicy enough). Since the food is the same for both the hot pot and BBQ, I'd recommend choosing either one or the other... probably the hot pot, since there are so many delicious soup bases to choose from. The sushi meanwhile ranged in quality - everything was good, but the specialty rolls tended to be the better than the simple tuna or salmon rolls.

As for the dining experience, it was easily 5 stars. The entire restaurant is immaculately clean, and all of the appliances are brand new and in great working order. And the staff are some of the friendliest, most hospitable people you will ever meet. This will absolutely be our go-to hotpot restaurant...