Published by Jeremy. Last Updated on January 15, 2025.
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When it comes to all-you-can-eat restaurants, we often visit with a bit of suspicion. Is the food good quality? Do you get your money’s worth? Is it just another buffet gimmick? We could go on.
We had all of these thoughts and then some when we read that Hong BBQ & Hot Pot was opening on McKnight Road. A chain hot pot and barbecue restaurant located right next to Best Buy? We had a lot of questions.
It turns out all of our concerns were overblown because Hong BBQ & Hot Pot delivers a stellar dining experience for those who love hot pot or Korean barbecue, and its location makes for a massive space that can accommodate many people- a win-win all around.
But we have two up-front recommendations before diving in- go hungry and take friends with you.
Hong BBQ & Hot Pot Thrives in Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Dining
When you arrive at Hong BBQ & Hot Pot, despite being an all-you-can-eat restaurant, you’ll have some decisions to make. It is best to think about these before you get there, so let’s break it down right away.
The menu here is set up with three main options you have to choose between at the start- whether you’ll have hot pot, barbecue, or for an additional fee of just a couple of dollars, both. The key piece to think about ahead of time for this restaurant is that everyone in your party has to order the same thing (although with hot pot everyone gets to pick their own broth from about eight choices- a nice added touch).
We visited with friends for our first time and decided to try both sides of the menu to get a nice cross-section of what Hong BBQ & Hot Pot is all about.
The decisions continue as you’ll likely spend a fair bit of time working your way through the menu and deciding what vegetables, meats, seafood, and more you should try for your chosen meal. By our count, the menu had approximately 80 items for hot pot and just under 40 for Korean barbecue. When we said to bring friends, we really mean it because working your way through the 100+ menu items without a decent group is simply impossible!
Over the course of our meal (which is often capped at two hours per table), we went through several rounds of meat, seafood, and vegetables for both the hot pot and barbecue, and ordered enough for both in each passing round to account for the variable cooking times. Again, be strategic here because some items take longer to cook than others, particularly on the barbecue side.
We had some highlights here, enjoying pork belly (bbq), cumin lamb (bbq), spicy pork bulgogi (bbq), and shrimp (hot pot) to name a few. In fact, the only real misses here were that the scallops order for the hot pot (they’re quite small and got lost in the broth) and the spicy baby octopus for barbecue (we just couldn’t figure out how to cook it right- admittedly we did not ask for advice on this one, either).
Order a mix of all sides of the menu, including noodles and vegetables, and you’re going to leave quite full and happy here!
While we would not necessarily call this restaurant a buffet, as the staff brings out your orders directly to your table, including changing out your grill plate when it becomes too messy, the sauce station in the middle of the restaurant is set up in conventional buffet format.
Here, you can choose between several dozen sauces, mix-ins (garlic, green onion, etc), kimchi, and other sides to enjoy with your meal and is something you could easily forget to visit with the flurry of all the meat and seafood coming out to your table- so make sure to visit this early on to grab several dipping sauces and sides to enjoy, too.
The one major downside with the setup of the sauce bar is they give many recipes for DIY sauce along the sides of the bar, but the layout of each ingredient feels random and is a bit hard to find each ingredient in such a wide selection (cards with a numbering system would make it easier, if we could design it our way). Still, with our made-up sauces, we had some pretty incredible flavors.
Admittedly, one of the best ways to enjoy Hong BBQ & Hot Pot is by going with friends. Every tray of meat or seafood we ordered had enough items for four to enjoy a small bite or two comfortably. While we cannot say if meat orders scale based on the number of people at the table, we felt like we got to try more with a small group than if we had gone as a couple.
This is really the kind of place where you will want a bite or two of everything, and then only in revisiting a second time can you focus on your favorite cuisine type (hot pot or bbq) and meats. By going with friends, you can really try it all, or close to it, if you were so inclined!
Finally, for visitors it is also worth keeping in mind that the restaurant reserves the right to add on a surcharge for excessive wasted food. So be sure only to order food that you will try to eat. While we did have some leftovers, they were nominal and we were not assessed a fee, so at this time we’re not entirely sure where that line is. Just keep that in mind!
Overall, we were really pleased with Hong BBQ & Hot Pot. While this one is a bit more expensive than a typical meal out, we thought we got our money’s worth (and then some) here, especially since we went with friends and could try even more food options. We are excited that hot pot and Korean barbecue are becoming more popular in the city as they’re some of our favorite food styles, and we can’t wait to have more!
Hong BBQ & Hot Pot is located at 4801 McKnight Road just north of the city off of I-279.
