All You Can Eat HOTPOT Buffet Tour of New York PART 1

Hi, I'm Mike Chen A while ago I made a video where I went, tried, and reviewed many all-you-can-eat restaurants in San Francisco. And after that video came out, a lot of you messaged me asking me to do the same thing with New York City, so I thought I'd go around New York City and eat at a lot of hot pot

buffet

s with everything. that you can eat. -Places where you can eat hot pots in the city and we are going to try them and as before we are going to review them based on five things: quality of the meat, quantity of ingredients, the sauce bar, the broth and the service and we will classify each of these five criteria from one to five, with five being, of course, the best, and because there are so many all-you-can-eat

hotpot

places in the city, I don't think a single video will cover it. .

So we'll turn it into a series. Very good guys. Let's make hot pots. Our first stop is 99 Favors here in Flushing. I'm hungry. I had a reservation at 8:00. It's 8:16 and there are still a lot of people in front of me. I'm about to chew this bamboo. I mean pandas do it right? This is actually bigger at the top than at the bottom. Thank you. Wow, look how big that table is. Here, hot pot costs $22.99. You get a dollar off if you are a VIP. I don't know what it takes to be a VIP, but a dollar seems a little low if you want. getting Korean barbecue is $25.99, if you want to put them together it's $30.99 And here you can get a big family style pot and have three flavors and three broths or you can get a big pot with two broths or you can get your own small mini pot.

Here you don't mark anything on a piece of paper, just tell your waitress what you want and she will put it on the iPad. Now that I've ordered pretty much everything on the menu, let's look at the sauce situation. This sauce bar is actually very complete It has all my favorites: chive sauce, sesame sauce, Chinese barbecue sauce and hot oil Sauce number one and a very simple three

part

s sesame and one

part

chive sauce It's time to try the soup base and I'm going to start with the tomato. It tastes like ketchup. I was really anticipating it because in San Francisco I had a two-medium soup base that tasted great.

But this one really tastes like ketchup. This looks amazing. This is pork bone broth, so I'm going to have some meat with my broth. Pork bone broth has a lot of pork and herb flavor, but it's a bit of a mild herb broth. This is actually very good. This is my favorite broth so far. It is very herbal. There is definitely some Chinese medicine here. I like it, it's really good. Finally the spicy broth is very spicy. Wow, this broth, as you can see, has a lot of things and tastes pretty good. This is Mike, my waiter.

He is dissecting the shrimp. You must have gotten an A in science class; All my shrimp have been decapitated and he is deveining them right now. It's great table service. Of course, I opted for hot pot and barbecue. I can never resist that and this is my favorite fatty beef brisket and they also mixed it with some kind of hot sauce. I usually like these with a little salt, vinegar, and sesame oil. That's heavenly. The brisket's good lean to fat ratio is not cut as thinly as I would normally like, but the quality of this meat is undeniable. the fat just melts away.

On this side this is duck and whenever I see duck at a barbecue you have to get it. The duck is wonderful barbecue and look what a beautiful fat duck Mmm. I love barbecue duck and my conch is ready. I am very excited. I love the conch. I love the conch for its crunch. Okay, that's stupid. Sorry Sorry. It's so good; Not too much seasoning on that. Short Ribs Not the most tender short ribs you'll ever have, but hey, it's an all-you-can-eat

buffet

; It's pretty tasty Alright guys, I feel really bad right now because during this mealtime I've been neglecting someone and I feel really bad because, well, I love that person and for them to feel neglected by me I feel horrible, I need to make peace. it.

So let's pay a little attention to the hot pot, like I said, really delicious broth. Let's go ahead and add some lamb and some beef. About ten seconds later and that's it. Let's try the meat. You can say it's all you can eat. Hot buffet meat. I mean, it's not the most tender beef or lamb. But the meat is sliced ​​very thin and can absorb much of the soup. And that is. The soup really adds a lot of spice to the meat. My favorite thing to do is go tell the fried dough... to soak it in a delicious soup.

It's a beautiful bite. This is cow's tongue. Many people may not like this. But I love it. It's a really lean meat and really delicious. Dip that in my sesame oil and salt Guys, first time at a hot pot buffet. I'm feeling a little overwhelmed that you're looking at this. I have a pile of barbecue meat here. I have the BBQ meat dish I'm working on. here. I have my meat hot here, I have more roast meat here, and I have this delicious seafood on the grill. I really don't even know what to do with myself right now.

I don't know what they eat. I feel a little nervous. I'm going to breathe deeply. Let's start eating. I have so much meat that I feel like if I don't need these vegetables, something bad is going to happen. A couple of soups for dessert and this one looks like some frozen rice soup with peanuts and some kind of red jelly. It's a perfect little thing to drink after dessert. What I thought was red jelly is actually watermelon and this is very refreshing. And my tongue was burning a little from all the spices and heat and this thing just cooled everything down perfectly.

This looks like milk tea with a little grass gelatin in here AND it tastes like milk tea with a little grass gelatin. Both desserts are really refreshing, especially after hot and spicy pot. Oh, I just had an idea, guys. When they come here, they don't need to order drinks, don't they. Ask for a glass of water. Don't ask for an empty cup because it looks a little suspicious and fill it with milk tea and gelatin. This is a perfect drink with your hot pot. Now I feel a little stupid. Alright, let's talk about this place. 99 Favors for those of you who don't know is probably the most recognizable hot pot name in New York City.

I think they already have four locations. I think two in Manhattan, one in Brooklyn and one in Queens. And it's funny that the reason they called this 96 Flavors, as you saw on the front, is because every time they register a company, they have to call it something else. So there's kind of a countdown from 99 and if ever, you sound like a favor. They would have already dominated the world. Let's talk about the salsa bar. They have all the sauces I really love, very solid 4.5. In terms of variety, although the ingredients were presented in a beautiful menu with photographs, they don't offer as many products as you might think, for example no potatoes or eggs, they only have one type of lamb and one type of beef. and really no dumplings.

So for a change I'll give it a 3. Of all the broth options they offered I tried most of them, the spicy and herbaceous were pretty good, the others were either very bland or tasted like ketchup. For the broth I give them a 3.5. I'll also give them a 3.5 for quality meat. The meat was cut very thin if you cooked it very quickly and took it out. It will taste pretty good, but you can definitely tell that it's all you can eat is hot meat and it's a little tough. Finally, service and I think service is where the chain really shines.

I'm talking about the guy who dissected a shrimp next to me. Everyone was super attentive. I asked a lot of questions and they responded very patiently even though they were very busy. We had to wait about half an hour even though we had a reservation, so I give them a 4.5. According to me, I will give you at least 19 points and divided by 5 it will give you an average of 3.8 and guys, I feel after eating in Brooklyn, Manhattan and now at the washing places. This is a really solid place for

hotpot

or Korean BBQ or a combination of Korean BBQ and hotpot.

Alright guys, onto location number two. This is probably one of the most unique hot pot restaurants in New York and probably the most affordable because everything you see behind me, all this. Everything here and all of this is included in the buffet for about $12 for lunch, and I think $16 for dinner. This is an especially good value if you're a vegetarian because just look at all the stuff behind me: we have mushrooms, wood ears, more mushrooms, and gross things (broccoli). Another thing I really like about this buffet. They have some of the most unique noodles. Have I ever seen in my life, I mean, look at these things: fresh pumpkin noodles, spinach noodles, green tea noodles, but this design here is not just for vegetarians.

They have a variety of fish balls and fish cakes. But if you're a butcher like me you'll want beef and lamb. And you can order them by the plate for about $4 to $6 each. So I bought some fatty beef, some lean beef, some prime beef, some prime rib, and of course, some lamb. For soup bases they have dashi, some pork bones, vegetarian or spicy dashi, and spicy pork bone. I wanted to try the pork bone, but of course I wanted it to burn a little. So I got the spicy pork bone and got the regular dashi, just to try that soup base.

This is a Dashi broth, something very traditional for Shabu Shabu. There is not much flavor in this broth, more like it tastes like boiling water with a little Dashi. And this is the spicy pork bone. That's actually pretty good, the broth is very porky. It doesn't taste very like Chinese herbs because there really aren't many Chinese herbs here. It has a nice pork flavor, the sauce bar is something you normally won't try at all. You can eat a place with hot pots. There are a ton of different sauces here, including pineapple, sesame sauce, that sounds interesting, spicy mustard sauce, and wasabi.

They have a special spring sauce already mixed that I am going to try. This is their house sauce. Add a little garlic. A little wasabi. I don't know what I'm doing here, but let's try this pineapple sesame sauce. Small garnish. Something I never thought I'd say at a hot pot buffet; I think there is too much meat on my table. I'm going to get some vegetables. By the way, all of these count as vegetables. I mean, the pork meatballs have some leek in them and the spinach noodles have spinach Jackpot. This is definitely the most expensive item on the dinner menu.

It is not eaten just for pleasure; It is eaten for its value. The meat appears to be of very good quality: thinly sliced ​​and with a nice marbling. Look how pretty it is. I'm going to try the spicy pork bone broth. It's ready. That was the lean meat and it was quite lean but at the same time quite tender. And I feel like enough soup base was soaked in there that the meat tasted pretty good without sauce. Now let's try the most expensive cut: the ribeye. That cooked in about five seconds. Dip it in a little of the original house sauce.

It is very good quality meat and the sauce is good. It's not as thick as Mike Chen's typical hot sauce; lighter more citrusy. I think it goes pretty well with meat. This is my sauce: put a little wasabi on it. How come I've never put wasabi in my hot sauce before? That's brilliant because it was mixed with sesame sauce and the wasabi didn't really burn. It had a more subtle wasabi flavor and was delicious. Now I'm going to show you why, in the hot pot, they consider me a dumper and since I'm here I can only stop as long as I want.

Fatty beef with dashi broth You can't really taste the broth much, but what that does is it brings out the natural flavor of the ingredient. So, if you like something more subtle, something that doesn't mask the flavor of the meats and vegetables. Basically the opposite of what I like to eat, this would be your broth. But my personal opinion remains that this broth is quite bland. I love oyster mushrooms. This is where I get my money back. After the fifth bite, the wasabi in the sauce starts to burn and I assure you it's a good burn.

The pork dumpling is ready. I like it when I bite into a dumpling and can chew the meat and vegetables inside the dumpling. But I feel like this dumpling just blends into the skin. This is what really excites me about spinach. noodles This counts as one serving of vegetables, right? Oh, the noodles are good. Here are the green tea noodles. They lost a lot of their green glow after boiling them. I just want to try some alone. It's pretty good. Just a little bit of matcha flavor. And I'm going to top the ramen with a little meat.

Come dad, I fancy the noodles, that's really the highlight of this place. I mean, it's also obviously a strategy to fill you up more. But the noodles are really fresh and delicious, and if you come here during lunch on a weekday, it's only 12 dollars. That's like a bowl of ramen. This is a large chicken dumpling. Now that's a good dumpling. I can taste the chicken and vegetable filling. The filling is a good size, very good dough ball. Alright mom, if you're watching, I'm trying to make this a balanced meal by eatingmy vegetables. I have about five plates of meat on the table.

But a spinach leaf cancels out a slice of meat, right? I mean math sounds good to me and I should know; I'm Asian. I'm good at math, especially food math. I'll accessorize this place; Their vegetables are really fresh. Okay, I went a little crazy with the sauce. This is pineapple sesame sauce with a little chive puree, a little spicy mustard and of course, wasabi. I'm not very sure about this. Well, maybe don't try it and bought some soft serve ice cream which is always welcome at the end of a hot pot. Of course, this place is kind of a mix between free Chinese hotpot and shapu shapu.

It's going to be hard to rate this place like I normally do, for example the quality of the meat. I mean, you have to pay for meat. The quality of the meat is quite good. But that doesn't come with the buffet. Also the service; When you're here, you don't really trust the server as your lifeline. Between your unlimited needs, that's also hard to say. Well, let's talk about what we know first, the soup base, in my honest opinion. If I had to put this place. broth in any category, will fall short either way. I feel like the dashi is not as tasty as some of the shabu shabu places I went to in California.

As far as the pork bone broth goes, it was tasty, but not entirely. I add too much to my meat and vegetables. Then for the broth. I give this place a 2.5 for variety. Especially the meatless kind, this place, as I mentioned before, is a vegetarian's paradise; tons of vegetables, tons of noodles, all really fresh. For that reason, I will give this place a 4. Now let's talk about the sauce bar. It's really made to satisfy both worlds of Chinese stew and shabu shabu, and there are a lot of very innovative sauces and spices in that bar that have generally never been seen before and it was a lot of fun to try them all, so for the sauce bar I give this place a 4.5 and even though I didn't trust anyone to get my food, the service here is really good, so that's why.

I'll give them a 4. As I mentioned before, meat is not included in the buffet, so we're going to skip that. So based on those 4 factors alone I would give them a total of 15 points divided by 4 i.e. 3.75 and that is why I normally only go to places where you can eat hot pot because here, although my meal was not expensive, 16 dollars I did. I order 5 meat dishes and those 5 meat dishes will cost me 25 dollars. So adding up my bills will probably be around $40, much more expensive than if I went to an all-you-can-eat buffet where everything was included. .

If you are vegetarian or vegan and love stew. It doesn't get much better than this deal, especially during lunch on weekdays. Alright guys, onto spot number three. Little Lamb is probably the best-known Chinese hotpot place in the United States. The Little Land places here in New York have what they call a summer special. I think starting in April you have all you can eat on Tuesdays and Thursdays and the general perception of Little Lamb stew is that the quality is really good both In terms of soup bases and ingredients, they don't have many options now when you're trying to choose soup .

They only have two options: one is their famous original milk bone broth and the other is their milk bone broth which is spicy and of course when they offer all you can eat it won't be everything on your typical menu; They have a selection here, which is included in the buffet, which is $22.95 and then a small premium section here for an additional $4 for each person at the table. So of course I have to add the bonus. As I mentioned before, although there isn't a huge selection of stew broth at this place, the broth they have is really famous.

They actually sell it in supermarkets and their signature is this very herbal, milky bone marrow broth based on Chinese medicine. My mouth is already watering because I know this is good. I know this is good and just look at all these herbs and ingredients they have here: ginger, dates, juju. I could drink that broth alone. It's really grassy, ​​nice, thick and creamy, really creamy and you can tell it's been cooked for a long time. Let me try the spiciness. It's delicious. I mean you can't even compare the broth; The broth here is 100%, hands down, the best of all the places I've been.

And in case you've never had stew before, here are the cooking instructions. There aren't many ingredients in terms of the salsa bar, but we'll make do. A little bit of Chinese barbecue sauce, sesame, minced garlic, we have to add a little bit of hot oil, a lot of hot oil. Finish with a little soy sauce. Just the way I like it: very red. Alright, I have my prune juice. I bought my watermelon juice. I have my sauce. Tastes good. I'm ready to rock and roll. This is their fried bun. Oh, I ate this before you dipped it in condensed milk.

It's actually really good; salty and sweet, who says you can't start with dessert? The first round is all meat. This is the triple A lamb. Let's start with this Look how thin it is Beautiful marbled, let's do the spicy side. It says ten seconds, but it will definitely be less, probably five seconds, yeah. It is done. oh it's a light, light and spicy flavor But most of it can be washed away by the broth if you don't want to, you don't even need to dip it in the sauce, the broth is tasty enough and that lamb man that is tender.

This is triple A. Let's dip it in the normal broth. Oh. Good thing New Zealand lamb is definitely spicier; Both pieces are ridiculously cute. This is Angus beef and right away you could tell it's different than regular fatty hot pot meats. Because just look at all the marbling, let me show you. This is a fatty beef dish. I don't know if kids can tell the difference, but here you see lean meat and then you get the fat. But here the marbling of the fat goes all the way and that's what will make this one super tender.

I could immediately tell the difference between that cut of meat and almost every other cut of meat I've ever tried. eat hot pot places. I'm going to try another piece of the spice as soon as you bite into it. That meat, it's just not tough at all, I mean it will lose a fight against a baby, it's incredibly soft, soft and melty, that's probably why this place only has buffets during the summer because otherwise they get ruined, I mean just for me . only. I would be here every day eating that meat. This is the meat soaked in beer, how beautiful.

I mean all the meat coloring, it's so pretty. It's like they took a crayon and colored the meat before removing it. You can smell the beer. That meat is very tender with just a slight taste of alcohol. It's actually much better than the wine-marinated beef I had on the west coast. This is the Cuban pig, it is a black pig from Japan. I know this may be a little scary because it looks very greasy, but I think it will be good. Come here, little pig. Wow, I love the hot oil here. It's actually spicy. Make sure you put your bib on, trust me, no matter how ridiculous it is, you'll be the one laughing at the end when everyone else is covered in splatter.

For those of you who don't like Spam, I challenge you to try it with your hot pot. Delicious I know it's a mystery meat, but that's a delicious mystery. This is the egg pork dumpling. It looks beautifull. It's like eating a pork tortilla. I'm not really sure what I just ate; Did I just eat dumpling? Did I just eat an omelette? Did I just have breakfast? Rolled tofu skin. I'll put it in my mouth right away. What I love about fried tofu is that it absorbs all the juice from the broth. Then it absorbs the juice from the sauce.

They never get soggy, so they still have a crunchy texture. Then you add a little meat. It's like a sleeping bag. Let's finish. It's like he just ate a bunch of tender meat from camping and gathered them into his delicious, delicious tofu sleeping bags. That was a big, all-encompassing fight. You got the meat, you got the tofu, you got some crunch from the tofu, and then you got the soup that sucked into the tofu. That's everything I love about stew, all in one bite. This is my favorite part of a stew: the potato. Maybe you guys will laugh.

Maybe they say: okay? What do you think of a potato? And you say this because you've never tried potatoes and stew. Take it out after it has been boiling for a while. To make it nice and soft, dip it in your sauce and that could be one of the best potato bites you've ever had. Another of my favorites are noodles. When you're almost done with your hot pot, put some noodles in your hot pot and let them absorb all that delicious flavor from the broth and all the food you've been putting in and out comes this beauty.

Look how delicious it is. Eating noodles at the end of the stew is like an encore. It's like re-tasting everything you put in the hot pot. It's as if Benjamin was buttoned up. That didn't even need the spices. I need my Chinese fried dough. I love Chinese fried dough and hot pot. It is oily and dirty. You've got that good broth in there. That's my guilty stew pleasure. I mean, hot pot is already a guilty pleasure. This is my guilty pleasure of my guilty pleasure. Alright, we're at a critical point in our hot meal. We still have a lot of food on the table.

I think everyone here is done. This is where I get all my money back. Come to dad, come to Mikey. It's like herding cattle. That's all. I've finished. I have a very strange reflex when I'm full, I sneeze non-stop about 10 or 12 times. I'm not kidding, guys. That means I sneeze, that means I'm done. Really done. Great hot pot experience. And at the end they give you some yogurt. It seems like the best way to complement a hot meal with a good yogurt drink. Then check this out; You may have laughed at my bib, but look what he protected me from.

This could have been on my soy sauce shirt. So I might have had soy sauce and grease on my shirt. Let's talk about hot pot. Of course, I opted for the premium hot pot, which is an additional $4, bringing my total here today to $26.95 and still not a bad all-you-can-eat deal. In terms of lamb, the triple A lamb that was on the regular menu and the special New Zealand lamb that was on the premium menu, I didn't feel like those two were really that different; the New Zealand lamb was even spicier. But I really love angus beef.

So I'd say shell out the extra $4 and get the premium items. If you do, I'd rate the quality of the meat here a solid 4. The hot pot, although there are only two selections, is probably the best hot broth you'll find at an all-you-can-eat buffet. So I'll give the broth another solid 4. When it comes to ingredients, they have a good selection here, so I'd give it a 3.5. The sauce bar itself is a little limited, but with the good broth, I don't feel like you need as much sauce elsewhere. But I'll still get it at 3 and finally, as far as service goes, I feel like it's going to be enough.

Be hit or miss, I've been here when the service is not so good, but today was perfect, they brought everything we needed of course. I was here at 4 o'clock so there weren't many people here. But just today I gave the service another 4. Which makes a total of 18.5 with an average of 3.7. But I think this is definitely one of the best tasting hot pot buffets in New York City. Definitely the best quality I wouldn't give. I suggest coming here if they didn't have a buffet because then I feel like you usually spend 30-35 dollars just on your portion.

So with the buffet at 100%, this place must have bubble tea after a great stew. You know what I love about stew besides the fact that it's ridiculously delicious? Hot pot is one of those foods that everyone loves. You could be a meat lover, a vegetable lover, a spice lover, a non-spice lover, a soft water vegetable eater. Whatever you like, stew has something for you. Hot pot is like the UN of food. If stew was in charge of the world, there would be world peace. Okay, maybe not that extreme, but it's certainly a food that brings people together, and that's one of the many reasons I love it.

And guys, as I mentioned at the beginning of this video, this is New York City. There are still plenty of hot all-you-can-eat places to try and I can't wait to get to them all. . And guys, as always, all the places I went in this video are listed in the description box below; all the scores, that's all just my own opinion, you might have something different, and that's completely fine. But definitely try these places and I'd love to know if you like them and as always, thank you all so much for checking this out. video and until we eat again.

I will see you later