Hot Pot King — Restaurant in Woodlawn

The best part about this place was the fact that they had a cover to go around your hotpot so that you wouldn't burn yourself. Not only does it protect you from burning yourself, it also looks beautiful and you could use it as a hand warner if you wanted to.

Other aspects that make this place different from other hotpot places:

1. There is a button at the end of the table for when you need the waiter/waitress for soup, bill, or questions. There will also be a worker going around with a cart that has soup, utensils, and the thick napkins.

2. They give you cucumber and fry chicken as appetizer. The fry chicken is the same that is sold at one of the restaurants outside. The chicken was ok but the cucumber was really good.

3. You can get snow crab legs. A lot of seafood buffets use to provide snow crab legs but once covid hit they all stop and didn't bother to bring it back even after recovery. Although the crab leg is small, it still tasted delicious. By the way, the crawlfish and snow crab legs are already cooked, you just need to reheat it in the hotpot.

4. They provide a tray for you to get a lot of stuff at once so it is usually not hard to get around.

5. You get a 5% discount if you pay with cash. You just press the bill button and when they give you the bill you go to the front and tell them you want to pay cash. They will give you another receipt or just tell you the marked down price. This is really good because tip is calculated as a percentage of the total so it would also go down. Also, not a lot of credit cards give 5% cash back, so just pay with cash.

Some other Asian store have also implemented incentive(s) if you pay cash, so always be on a look out for these deals.

The only part I don't like about this place is how dim the place is with black tables and dark furniture. Like it was so dark I didn't even realize my friend, that was sitting across from me, spilled water. The only bright places are the places where you can get food.

For some reason the restroom is located outside the restaurant, but still in the building. So I recommend going before you go in because once they are busy, how do you expect them to remember everyone that had gone in?

This place does give ice-cream. It is located at the back corner of the store. They also have a sign saying you can only take one per person, but it is so dark that they probably won't be able to tell you went to get ice-cream...

Me and my girlfriend came here tonight for dinner around 7pm, were big hotpot fans and wanted to give a new place a try. Our usual spot is a less than five minute walk from our home, but in the spirit of trying new things we drove thirty minutes to try this spot. When we first entered we were very impressed by the setup. The problem was the actual food, when we received our complimentary appetizer the fried chicken was cold and tasted like it had been fried hours prior. We went to make our sauce and realized half of the sauces were not labeled, which made making the sauce confusing because they almost all look the same. After we made our sauces we went to pick out the ingredients, similar to the sauce many of the items were not labeled and some of the labels by items were incorrect. When we sat down with the ingredients we learned that the beef we both picked out (two different forms, of beef) were frozen with the bottom stuck to the container the pieces were placed in and they were stuck to one another. The meat was frozen to the point that when we tried to move the meat to cook, it would shred. Both the vegetables and protein had a very old taste to them, and items that were not fresh were unimpressive in flavor. The salmon looked bad and had a lot of liquid pooling in the bowl it came in upon first glance, but we decided to give it a chance anyway. The fish had an extremely fishy flavor after cooked which is common when fish is not fresh or kept properly, the food was finished due to the $11.95 per pound waste charge. The salmon was not finished, as the taste was just terrible. Very disappointed by this experience, especially in light of the amount of good reviews on the website and due to the fact hot pot is our favorite spot. This place was definitely a first and last time spot, we ended up paying $67.00 and some change. This is was also disappointing because the food and experience just wasn’t...

So I will start off by saying I had a very lovely, helpful service. But I do have mixed reviews about how I feel about this place.

Things I liked:

1. They had so many gluten-free broths. The mushroom broth was flavorful and fantastic. You did not need to add any sauces
2. The staff was well educated and helpful through the whole process
3. The food that was thawed was fantastic and tasty

Things I was unsure about

1. the set up was a little odd. The meat and seafood come proportioned. I liked this due to ease of grabbing, but some had too much, and I felt like I was wasting it. The trays were also too big for the portion of food that was in it, so it was awkward to carry back.
2. Some of the seafood was frozen on the shelves. This should not have happened and was off putting
3. The spoons to catch all your soup you need to grab yourself. I didn't see it at first, and it made it slightly challenging to eat.
4. I asked the waitress if the oysters were safe to eat raw, and she said she did not know. I really do appreciate the honesty, but I thought it was odd to have oysters that can't be consumed raw when in the shell.

Things I did not like:

1. I went for lunch on Saturday. Yes, the food was good overall. The service was good, but most places do a lunch special, and they do not. For $31.99 a meal, I felt like this was kind of high for the selection that they had.
2. I went for lunch, it was not crowded in the resturant (yes I know this sounds good) but I can't image how overcrowded their small food grabbing area must get when a lot of people are in the resturant.
3. The parking lot was a little odd, and then getting into the restaurant, you went through what looked like a mall food court. It was different.

Overall, I did have a good experience. Would I go back again, probably not due to cost and how the layout was. Do I think I got my moneys...