| Cuisine | Chinese |
|---|---|
| Price | $$$ (31-50) |
| Rating | 5/10 |
| Last Visit | Aug. 22, 2019 |
| Location | New York: Lower East Side |
Hometown Hotpot & BBQ is a restaurant (that does hot pot and bbq, unsurprisingly) near the middle of Little Italy, Chinatown, and SoHo. A bit on the more pricy side (around $8 more than the equivalent for 99 Favor Taste), but the quality of food does seem to be marginally better. There are a lot of nice things about this restaurant, like the interior and most of the items on the menu, but there are also a lot of things that aren't so great (like the food service and the sliced lamb, which was sliced against the grain). I have a perhaps unreasonable dislike for sliced lamb sliced against the grain. A decent option for hot pot.
> For hot pot, each person actually has their own individual pot. This definitely makes the experience much more convenient, particularly if you're in a large party.
> The interior is actually really nice, much nicer than 99 Favor Taste. Sauce bar is solid as well.
> Generally speaking, the quality of the food is decent. No items were necessarily spectacular individually but not surprising given that it's hot pot.
> Good for large parties. The restaurant itself is huge and has some really large tables.
> Unsurprisingly for an AYCE hot pot restaurant, the servers have something around a 50% chance of actually bringing you any item that you order. For some items, expect to have to order it multiple times before it actually comes. Strangely enough, they are actually really on top of bringing you meat as soon as you order it, but not so much for vegetables and other items.
> There were some items which I was pretty disappointed about: the quail egg (which had a really strong seaweed taste despite the fact that we never ordered seaweed) and the sliced lamb (which was mostly cut with the grain and as a result was not nearly as tender as it could have been).
> The quantity of each order was highly variable - we ordered the thin vermicelli and got a huge amount - covering half of a large plate, but we also ordered fish filet and got like four pieces.