N.J.’s 1st revolving hot pot restaurant is fun, but you’ll pay for it | Review (original) (raw)
Revolving hot pot at Meet Hot Pot & Cajun Seafood in Carlstadt, NJ (Lauren Musni | NJ Advance Media)Lauren Musni
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Winter’s freezing temperatures are sweeping through New Jersey. Thankfully there’s no better antidote than bubbling hot pot, with soothing warmth and flavor just a dip away.
Nothing beats the excitement of watching fresh vegetables, slices of marbled meat and tender noodles being brought to the table for guests to cook in simmering pots of broth. And now there’s a new restaurant elevating the New Jersey hot pot experience to a new, futuristic level.
Meet Hot Pot & Cajun Seafood, open since November in Carlstadt. The restaurant features a conveyor belt that rotates platters loaded with beloved hot pot ingredients throughout the restaurant for diners to grab and drop into their broth. The spot’s owners, husband and wife duo of Tian and Yomi Zeng, are already well-established in New Jersey’s culinary scene. They also own Beijing Hot Pot in Rutherford, a restaurant that ranked No. 10 on our best hot pot restaurants in New Jersey list in 2023.
With their latest restaurant, the couple wanted to bring a new hot pot concept to New Jersey.
“Revolving hot pot is very popular in China, but there isn’t really anything like that here.” Yomi Zeng told NJ Advance Media. “There are dozens of ingredients for hot pot and people often don’t know what they are. On the revolving belt, people can see what it is and then choose what they like.”
Thinly sliced meat at Meet Hot Pot & Cajun Seafood in Carlstadt, NJ (Lauren Musni | NJ Advance Media)Lauren Musni
At Meet Hot Pot & Cajun Seafood, guests seated at tables next to the belt may simply grab the hot pot ingredients themselves. The novel concept is similar to conveyor belt sushi, which is also rising in popularity in New Jersey.
Ingredients like vegetables (bok choy, lettuce, an assortment of mushrooms), seafood (shrimp, lobster meatball, crab sticks), noodles (udon, ramen, wheat), tofu and much travel through the restaurant on the conveyor belt in bowls and plates covered in plastic wrap. The only exception is meat, which has to be ordered and delivered to the table by the wait staff.
New seafood is plated every 30 minutes and all other ingredients every two hours, Zeng said.
Each plate and bowl is color-coated, indicating the price. Yellow is 2,greenis2, green is 2,greenis3, white is 4andbrownis4 and brown is 4andbrownis5. All the plates are added up and calculated at the end. The process of watching the conveyor belt and grabbing ingredients without the hassle of ordering was certainly entertaining. On the other hand, it was tedious waiting for plates to come back around if I missed them.
There are also tables that aren’t next to the conveyor belt — these guests just order everything off the menu and have it brought to them like at a typical hot pot restaurant. For those near the belt, items can still be ordered if guests don’t feel like waiting for the ingredients they want to come back around.
Dipping sauces at Meet Hot Pot & Cajun Seafood in Carlstadt, NJ (Lauren Musni | NJ Advance Media)Lauren Musni
The broth for the hot pot comes in six flavors — original, tomato, spicy, green chili pepper, mushroom and Japanese curry. I tried the original and tomato. The original was light and savory while the tomato, was rich and slightly tangy — both serving as a perfect base for all the fresh ingredients. Guests can order individual hot pot, starting at 6eachorshareabigpotinthemiddlewithtwodifferentbroths(6 each or share a big pot in the middle with two different broths (6eachorshareabigpotinthemiddlewithtwodifferentbroths(16) or three ($21). Each customer is also given six different dipping sauces.
The hot pot itself was excellent with tender meat, comforting broth and fresh vegetables. The sauces given also gave everything an extra layer of flavor. My favorites were the nutty sesame sauce and the smoky dry cumin spice seasoning.
The only real drawback here is the price. While the conveyor belt makes for a fun dining experience, it’s not cheap. The plates on the belt are for one person only, so the bill can get expensive quickly. I grabbed two vegetables and a plate of noodles from the belt, ordered two plates of meat and had two broths. My meal was $52 in total, and it didn’t feel like I got all that much food. An all-you-can-eat price model would be more effective here, at least from the consumer perspective.
Big sharing hot pot at Meet Hot Pot & Cajun Seafood in Carlstadt, NJ (Lauren Musni | NJ Advance Media)Lauren Musni
While it’s not an elite hot pot restaurant (I still prefer Garden Shabu in Little Ferry), Meet Hot Pot & Cajun Seafood’s conveyor belt makes it one of the most unique hot pot restaurants in the state. It is exciting to see new hot pot methods coming here. But that experience comes at a price.
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Lauren Musni may be reached at lmusni@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @Laurengmusni and on Instagram @laurengisellemusni.
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