Hot Pot King - Catonsville, Maryland

Howard Chow

Overall I was pleasantly impressed. The decor and atmosphere are really nice especially compared to the rest of The Hub. They have unique selection that other hot pot places don’t - like oysters and Alaskan crab. Wintermelon tea is included in the price. Broth flavor is pretty good. Downside is the meat quality was meh. you grab everything yourself which can be a bit of pro and con. Service was good and friendly.

Laura Horowitz

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 worth? Debatable.

Janice L

This hotpot restaurant is located inside another building called the Hub, which is very convenient if you want boba afterwards!

We sat down and we were immediately served some popcorn chicken! It was very bland (not even salted!), but very crunchy.

This hotpot place is very different in that EVERYTHING is buffet style, including all meats and seafood. No order from a menu/app except for soft drinks and the soup base. Everything is included in the price of $32.99/adult (child is $16.99 for age 10 and under 5ft), but soft drinks and alcohol. Soda is in a can, so no free refills. Dining time is limited to 90mins.

There are buttons at every table to call a server over for more water/soup, bill or all other services; however, the servers were very attentive in that we rarely had to press the button to get help! The times that we did press the button, we were helped immediately.

One thing that I really enjoyed about this place was that everything was proportioned out into small portions (except for veggies), so after grabbing one dish of something, I grab a dish of something else, and in the end, I end up eating a larger variety of food! I left feeling like I really got my money's worth since I felt like I ate a lot of different foods.

There is a standard sauce station. I normally really love the restaurant house sauce, but I didn't really like the one here. It was pretty bland. There are fresh cut fruits, yellow and ice cream as dessert! I think ice cream is limited to one per person.

Lorna

We try out different hot pot places and we really liked this one! It offered a wide variety of fresh meats, seafood, veggies and soup base! The atmosphere and customer service was great! Very clean and as soon as you are seated, the host is already bringing out the appetizers and water! Plenty of space. Great to have a group get together. Each person will have their own hot pot to cook their own. The awesome part...whenever you need service they have this push button stand at your table even though they do come around to make sure you are taken care of. Overall we had a great experience and our bellies were full!!

SZ

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 multiple times.

Hung Do

Wow, so good. Good choices of broths & ingredients - meats, seafood, veggies. Some fruits & desserts, they also had ice cream. Clean place & excellent service. Nice decors. We had a great time. 2 thumbs up.

Gary Ma

Good hot pot place with a wide variety of ingredients and a decent variety of sauces. I would like to see more types of hot sauces, however. Everything seemed very fresh. The staff was very friendly and helpful. The price is a bit on the high side but worth it. The dessert selection was quite good but the ice cream flavors were very ho-hum. There were vanilla and chocolate when I expected green tea or plum.

Sheliah Washington

I This place! Food is Fresh the waiters are awesome! I love the concept of the soup broil , I’m happy to be introduced to it and it’s affordable. This now on my list as a go too restaurant.