Summary
I’m not a big fan of venturing out to deep Queens. The trains out here are probably not as bad as going into Manhattan, but it sure feels bad. The E trains today were barely running, and the R trains were making local stops going towards Flushing.
However, today was one of those days where we felt like grubbing some all you can eat hot pot. Instead of Chinese style, we heard of this place in Jackson Heights that was Thai style. It was pretty interesting.
Like typical Chinese hot pot places, you have to go to the cold freezer bin to get your vegetables, noodles, tofu, and fish cake fixes. Some interesting things I haven’t seen before include what looks like dill, mint, different mushroom/fungi looking things. I never remember what those are called. There are some rice cookers that have garlic fried rice in them. I opted not to get it because carbs are not great bang for the buck.
The hot pots are sitting on induction stoves in the table. You can order two types of broths. We got the tom zap and jaew hon. The tom zap consits of glangal, lemon grass, lime leaf, and shallot. The jaew hon consists of shallot, basil, and beef/pork blood. The tldr is that the tom zap tastes more soury, and the jaew hon tastes more salty. Both have that traditional thai flavor of subtly sweet/spicy flavors in the broth.
The most adventurous things that we ordered aside from the beef/pork/chicken standard cuts of meat were the tripe and the shrimp. I’m normally not a fan of shrimp hot pot style because it tends to overcook fast or the shrimp is frozen. Both incidents happen, so I think you should skip seafood here. Other than that, the tripe was OK. I knew my gut says to go with just standard meats, and rest assured I think standard meats is really the way to go here. You can easily get full within 30-45 minutes.
We also ordered drinks, specifically a coconut smoothie and a thai iced tea. Both drinks were large compared to Manhattan places and also filling too.
The meal also came with 3 sauces, a super sweet one and 2 soury ones. All fo them have that Thai flavor you’d expect from restaurants.
Service was fast, and price was $24.99 at the time of this writing. This is CASH ONLY, and on the menu it says 90 minute time limit. If you want extra 30 minutes, it’s $5 per person, and the food wasting surcharge is also $5 per person.
Final Verdict
If you’re willing to make the trek, this place is pretty good for AYCE MEAT fixin. I still prefer Japanese shabu shabu and Chinese hot pot over Thai, but nonetheless it’s still pretty good.
Yelp Jabs
they limit your dining time to 90 mins and they will come over with the bill even if you’re not finish. I’m a slow eater and since this is hotpot the food is hot so it slowed down my eating time by double. I wasn’t really happy when they came over with the check.
It’s advertised at 90 minutes. Common sense dictates read the menu warnings. It literally says “90 minutes” on the menu. And clearly, anything that has a time limit is not going to be good for slow eaters.
Terrible service and bad organize for seating because there was 2 people siting in a table of 6 people’s , we was a party of 5 and we was told to wait 1 hours.
You violated 2 cardinal rules in common sense dining: 1) Don’t go in non even number parties and 2) Anything larger than 4 will have nonsense wait times.
Good garlic fried rice. But the Hotpot was just meh. Not really worth the price. Nothing really more to say.
This Yelp Elitist’s reviews in general are very meh in the first place. Nothing really more to say other than read their reviews if you want to be entertained with dullness.