Buffalo Little Lamb — Restaurant in Town of Amherst

Service was good and responsive, but it was my first experience with hot pot.. and lemme tell ya.. these guys are not good for newbies. Every mistake you make, you are paying $$$ plus potential digestive complications, even if you have no idea what you are doing. I told them "I have no idea what a hot pot is.." so I asked them to explain the concepts. They basically over simplified it.. and showed me the instructions on the back of one of their menus, but they never gave me common things to look out for, so I had no idea what I was doing. I asked for the spicey broth, and man was it tasteless. It was full of dried chopped peppers.. seriously.. if I strained out the broth.. Id be left with 2-3 cups of chopped inedible dried peppers. Blech. So on to the cooking. They brought me a lot of raw ingredients (veggies and thinly sliced meat) based on selections I made on the menu. So I figured "I'll just dump all my veggies in the pot" since I was given no direction. After 5 mins of cooking, I realized they gave me a very very small bowl to use. I had a very large hot pot containing all my ingredients cooking.. and there was no room to take them all out. The pot is constantly cooking on high and boiling all the time, making the area steamy and slightly hazardous to burns. I essentially overcooked everything. I wish I could control the settings.. or knew where they were. So aside from burning my tongue, sweating profusely, coughing/gagging really loud a few times from the spices.. I decided to slow down a bit. Mid way I asked for a different broth.. but they said I couldnt change it.. rather they could add more broth without the spices, but it made the hot pot taste bland. I still had no idea what to do with all the 2-3 cups of dried spices that was sitting in the water cooking for the entire 1 hour. In all honesty Im not so sure if $25 for this buffet experience was worth it since Im the one doing all the work. I could have given this place a 5 star ratings if: they showed me how to pace myself by portioning out how much food I should put in the pot, offered a demonstration of how to cook for newbies, tutor me for the first time so I can learn rather than making mistakes that I'm literally paying $$ for, have a timer with alarm, gave me a bigger bowl, gave a bigger and better strainer, gave access to their pot settings, not put 2-3 cups of dried spices (its not edible) and call it spicey broth, offered free soda refills.. but I give it a 2 star because the place practically didn't do anything special or accomodating for me.. I could have had a better meal at home.

On a positive side, my wife enjoyed a $6 veggie noodle dish..

Anyways.. I think this kinda ruined the experience of doing hot pot. I doubt Id try...

Finally got a chance to come try the new hotpot place in Buffalo!

For those who don't know, Hotpot aka Shabu Shabu is a when there is a pot of boiling broth that you cook vegetables, meat, etc. in and eat right then and there. It was delicious during the spring and would definitely hit the spot in the winter.

I came here with a party of 4 and we were immediately seated. The place was fairly empty except for 3 other parties (probably because most of the Universities are on summer break). We were seated at a table large enough for 6. It's nice because the heating elements are built into the table and won't actually turn on until a pot is in place (reduce the chances of burning yourself if the stove is left on) The waitress was very helpful in explaining the different items on the menu and ensuring that our waters / broth were refilled in at timely manner.

We opted for 4 small hotpots (one seafood, one plain broth, and 2 mala (hot broth)). We ended up getting the quail eggs, beef and lamb platter, pork platter, shrimp, fishballs, green onion pancake, and vegetable platter, which all came out very quickly. They have a sauce bar with recommendations for combinations (but you can also make your own combinations!) The food plenty for 4 grown adults and we left very full and satisfied. The bill came out to be around $85 for everything, which is a bit pricy for hot pot when compared to prices back in California (some places offer AYCE + unlimited beer for $25 per person at dinner!).

Couple things I would do different next time. The price for the broth is per pot. If your group doesn't mind sharing, you can save some money by either getting one pot or a split pot. For the 4 of us, we spent nearly $15 just on the 4 small pots, if we had ordered a split pot, it would have been $9 instead. If your party is small, the platters may be worth if it you want a variety of items but may be better to order more single items for larger parties. For instance, we ordered the vegetable platter. It was nice because they had a little of everything but it clearly was meant for 1 - 2 people. So in the future, I would order different vegetables separately, even though it will cost more, you get more...

I’ve gone here a couple of times now including on my birthday. I really did like this place at first however my last two visits which have been within 3 days of each of other have been pretty bad.

The first bad visit consisted of moldy corn. The corn they served to me had literal fluffs of mold on it which couldn’t have been overlooked by anybody.

The most recent time today, they gave me broccoli that had bugs on it. I noticed the broccoli having bugs on it after I put it in the broth and requested a new broth and broccoli. I understand things happen however a simple rinse would’ve solved that. I requested new broth and broccoli which also obviously had not been rinsed or anything. After requesting the replacements, service went down immensely. At the time there was only one other couple in the restaurant seated directly behind my party, the server would completely walk past us to ask the other couple how their food was but ignored us for the rest of the night. When it came time to pay, they tried to charge me for both the original broth + vegetables and the replacements.

Although I genuinely liked this place, these two experiences have made me not want to go back at all. With a couple of adjustments this place would be wonderful. Using gloves when they serve you your food, rinsing your vegetables, and ensuring that food wasn’t so old it molded. Overall I did enjoy the restaurant however these are experiences that cannot be...