JBBQ Hot Pot & BBQ — Restaurant in Town of Smithtown

Was looking forward to a great experience as first time diner but wasn’t too blown away by any of it. Had a very nice and excited server who forgot to raise the heat and her accent made it very difficult for us to understand the overall instructions. Small tables and very speedy service but not as clear instructions made it a bit confusing for us. Over $200 cost of everything because the server recommended items we really didn’t even touch. You don’t need 2 big soup orders for 2 adults and 2 kids but she recommended them and forgot to turn on the heat under 1 of them. Everything they have meat wise is pre sliced and not covered that gets pushed around on a trolly and with very little room on the tables they pile up dishes. Unless you go with someone who knows what to do I wouldn’t recommend this franchise to first time dinning alone. Definitely no one can eat a lot of anything if it’s not cooking lol but whatever it was an experience. This is what I figured out… don’t rely on the sever. Raise the heat knobs are under the table so food can cook faster not like slow roast settings and don’t order whatever they recommend. Carefully select 2-3 items and cook that properly on proper heat then you can ask for additional items. Table of 4 gets 1 hr and 30 min. Good luck getting your server s attention for good 30 minutes plus way too loud music for my taste and I love loud music just not in a restaurant that doesn’t have enough servers on a Saturday night, so your “excuse me” won’t land on any ears. Felt chaotic for $200 plus Dinner cost. I would rather stick with Fago De chao and Limani for such price of sub par over all experience. FYI, you don’t get to go containers but server gave 1 for $10 in which you can fit a very small candy bar. I have a feeling the soup gets re used… I don’t know something about this place felt odd like unethical and unsanitary odd. They don’t allow left overs to be taken home obviously it’s ‘all you can eat’ but if you charge me $200 plus for things I didn’t need but your server recommended to order and left heat at low which we felt bad about the left overs, it seemed unethical to then charge $10 for a tiniest container. Nothing about the place was worth 5 star review. We don’t drink alcohol so sorry it’s a sober...

Recently I got to enjoy both the Shabu Shabu and BBQ here.

For my drink I chose sake. The chilled Little Sumo Sake came in the cutest glass with cartoon Sumo wrestlers. It was surprisingly smooth. As advertised on the package it was full strength at 18% ABV, but smooth enough to take bigger sips than you normally would with liquors of similar strength.

The Shabu Shabu pots for larger groups were split and held two different types of broth customized to what the people nearby wanted. I got to try the original, spicy and healthy herbs broths. The original reminded me of a chicken and pork bone broth. It’s good when you want to taste the flavor of the meat that you are cooking in the broth and use the dipping sauce (a sweet soy based BBQ sauce). The spicy broth is excellent for spicy food lovers. It was at just the right level to make your tongue tingle, but not having you running for water. The spicy broth coated any of the meats that you threw into it with the spices within it so there was no need for the dipping sauce when using this broth. The herbal broth had some umami notes most likely from the cordyceps. I also tried mixing the herbal broth with a bit of the spicy broth and it was a good combination. Our group tried a variety of meats, tofus and vegetables to throw into the broth. The menu lists the cooking times for all of the meats, but it was easy enough to tell when the meat was cooked by the color change. All of the meat was high quality and thin cut on the premises (you could watch them cut the meat right next to the bar).

For the BBQ it was recommended to start with the non-seasoned meats after the grill was coated with butter. The vegetables were cooked towards the cooler outer edge of grill while the meats were cooked at the center. We were supplied with a trio of sweet dipping sauces. I found the one with the fruit notes (middle) to go really well with the pork and the sweet & spicy (right) to go well with the steak. In addition there was a sauce station to make a custom dipping sauce. The marinated meats were the last to hit the grill. The bone in short ribs were my favorite since it was packed with flavor and tender.

Definitely plan to return...

I have been here multiple times with my husband and the last two times we’ve been there, I’m not sure if we’re going to go back.

We went here today 5/5/24 and noticed our server, Brian, hadn’t served us within 10 mins of sitting down. So then we noticed the Barcode on the table that allows us to order our food from our phones so we ended up placing it there. 15 mins. pass by and our server had came by and said “I’m sorry” after stating we ordered our food through Barcode. There was not many people within the restaurant either and half of the waiters/waitresses were chit chatting near the check in area. Next thing you know, we aren’t checked in with after almost 25 mins. And every waiter we aimed to stop said “One second—“ and went to wait their tables.

I noticed in the atmosphere the environment who was being serviced so kindly and it seemed as if predominantly they were focused only on the people who are white. Mind you, we’ve come here multiple times. I don’t know if it’s because we were racially profiled but I was extremely upset once we brought it up to our waiter that there was no service being given other than the gentlemen behind the counter who were serving us our food. I think it’s extremely upsetting to see and as a POC who was completely ignored meanwhile the people around us who are white being given better treatment. And it shouldn’t take us to mention it to our waiter for him to understand how upset we were. And if you didn’t want us scanning the barcode and ordering our own food through it, remove the stickers as well!

I’ve worked in the food service industry on multiple occasions. I’ve given the benefit of the doubt many times but to have very similar situations happen twice is concerning. My top priority when working in the food industry was the customers and made sure they were satisfied and content before I went and talked to my coworkers.

We won’t be going back here for quite some time and hopefully, we’ll see if any thing...