Dinner at KPOT, the Wild West of the Far East (Dining Out Review)

Syracuse, N.Y. — The pink, human-sized mouse statue, with X’s for eyes as if cartoonishly deceased and the words “Hello Baby” written across its chest, greeting diners in the foyer of KPOT Korean BBQ & Hot Pot was the first clue that we were in for an adventure.
The fast-expanding Korean barbecue chain has grown from around 50 locations when the Syracuse location opened in November 2023, to more than 80 locations now, with more on the way. With its sleek, modern interior and interactive cook-your-own format that doubles as a meal and entertainment, it’s no surprise the concept has spread nationwide.
It’s also not surprising that there were groups of diners waiting outside the restaurant when we arrived around 7 p.m. on a Saturday night. We added our names to the waitlist and were quoted a 45-minute wait. Around a half-hour later, my phone buzzed with a text message alerting me that our table was ready.
Diners have the choice of Korean barbecue or hot pot, which while traditionally Chinese, is available with various soup bases, ranging from Thai tom yum and spicy Szechuan to Japanese miso and Korean tofu and seafood. Either is $31.99 for dinner, or diners can do both for $36.99.
While new to Syracuse, the concept of Korean barbecue restaurants, with diners cooking their meats and seafood on a circular grill in the center of each table, is not. What is different, however, is that unlike my experiences at other, non-KPOT Korean barbecue restaurants, as well as what appears to be the case in at least some other KPOT locations, is that all the raw proteins are served buffet-style, rather than being ordered and brought to the table individually.
Our server offered us a brief buffet tour, but then we were on our own. The buffet includes one table of vegetables, mushrooms and a few types of fruit; another with several kinds of noodles, crab sticks, frozen dumplings, frozen fish balls and other add-ins for the hot pot; another with raw, refrigerated meat and seafood and a freezer stocked with thinly-sliced frozen rolls of beef, pork, lamb and chicken. A display case with a few different cakes for dessert was located precariously close to the raw meat freezer, the serving tongs resting on their respective holders only inches away from each other. Let’s hope no one accidentally switched them up!
The hot bar included plain fried rice, French fries, chicken nuggets and French fries, despite pictures on KPOT’s social media accounts showing a much more varied spread. The rice isn’t bad, especially if you take some right after the pan has been refilled, though filling up on carbs at a meat and seafood buffet is amateur work. Feel free to pass on this.
There is something bemusing about watching kids and adults alike walking around the buffet with small plastic plates stacked high with raw meat like a pack of cavemen fresh from the hunt. Not that I’m immune from the outlandishness, as I carried my plate of spicy pork and beef bulgogi and thin-sliced rolls of ribeye and pork belly, piled together because at that moment, it wasn’t clear that the frozen meat was only meant for the hot pot.
As hungry as you might be when you sit down, you need to wait a few minutes to allow the grill to get hot and the soup to reach a simmer. Watching your steak turn a drab shade of gray as it slowly cooks on the warming grill pan is the wrong way to start your dinner. Our server suggested adding a pat of butter to the grill before adding the meat to prevent sticking. However, it wasn’t until I added the first batch of meat to the grill and went back up for more did I notice the individual butter packets at the sauce bar. I’m sure the butter works, but the fatty piece of pork belly I had cooking on the grill seemed to do the trick.
As is often the case, the fattier meats were superior to the lean cuts. For the grill, the beef short ribs — bone-in, tender and impressively well-marbled — are a must. Same goes for the beef finger meat, which despite the name, is strips of beautifully marbled beef cut from between the ribs. Both the spicy and traditional beef and pork bulgogi, the classic Korean dish of thinly sliced meat in a sweet soy marinade, were excellent.
I was surprised to see pork cheek, or jowl, on the buffet line. With its thick fat cap and meat so well striated with fat that it’s almost light pink, you’ll want a sauce with some spice to help cut through the richness. An excellent choice as a filling for the ssam lettuce wraps, should you choose to go that route.
The same philosophy applied to the hot pot. The sheets of pork belly were melt-in-your-mouth tender after only 20 seconds or so in the hot soup. The similarly fatty beef belly and sliced lamb were also excellent. Prime beef brisket sounded like a good idea, but was much leaner than the other choices and not as flavorful.
The large, head-on shrimp seemed like a good idea, but the meat stuck to the shell and removing the head, shell, legs and “vein” (Spoiler: it’s their digestive tract) of a hot shrimp right off the grill proved to be more work than it was worth. Stick to the smaller garlic shrimp, which are peeled and cleaned and unlike the whole shrimp, come pre-marinaded.
The chicken options are fine, though we tended to stick more to the beef and pork, both because the fat allowed for a bit more leeway on the grill, but also from a value proposition. Who wants to eat chicken breast when there are beef short ribs to eat?
Other than the garlic shrimp, the seafood options were disappointing. The spicy salmon had little flavor other than the marinade and the calamari, cut in a crosshatch pattern often called “pineapple cut” was chewy. I had a moment of moral uncertainty as I put a spicy baby octopus on the grill, saw the little tentacles curl from the heat and a few minutes later, used the scissors provided to cut it into pieces. The flavor was mild, though fairly tender. Sorry, buddy, it wasn’t worth it.
The ribeye steak, a dinner exclusive, sounds great, but the grill didn’t seem hot enough to give the three-quarter-inch-thick steak a proper sear. That might have had to do with the fact that our grill randomly shut off during dinner, requiring a staff member to come over and turn it back on.
The sauce bar is chaotic. There’s a dizzying array of sauces, oils, chilis, chopped herbs, spices and just about everything else you need to build your own barbecue dipping sauce. It sounds great in theory. In reality, it’s a crowded bar where people have to guess the differences between sweet spicy sauce, BBQ hot spicy sauce, Sunchang hot sauce and chili garlic sauce and hope it works with whatever they already have in their bowl.
My first concoction, a mix of “KPOT sauce”, chili garlic sauce, ponzu sauce and a bit of hot chili oil, worked well, the bright citrus flavor of the ponzu pairing nicely with the sweetness from the KPOT sauce. Later on in the meal, wanting a bit more heat, I made a new sauce, a blend of hot chili oil, fish sauce, sesame oil, ginger oil, peanut paste and scallions. It tasted like used fryer grease.
Above the sauce bar is a sign with eight sauce recipes, billed as KPOT’s favorites, with names like sour and spicy sesame (chili garlic sauce, scallion, sesame sauce, vinegar, garlic, sesame oil and soy sauce) and sweet and spicy pepper (black pepper, garlic, soy sauce, sweet and spicy sauce, hot oil, scallion and sugar).
This left me with one burning question: Why not just serve those prepared sauces at the sauce bar? Not only would I be able to enjoy the creations as KPOT intended, rather than clogging up the sauce bar as I read the recipe, find the ingredients and hope I got the ratios right, since the recipes are really just ingredient lists. Offer those eight sauce creations, plus a few base ingredients and modifiers, like chili paste, hot chili oil, sesame oil and soy sauce. I promise I won’t miss juggling a plate of raw meat in one hand as I wait to scoop sugar into a bowl with the other.
Making extra sure to use the dessert serving tongs and not the raw meat serving tongs, we capped dinner off with dessert. The choices included a plain sponge vanilla cake, that same cake, but with a white frosting and shredded coconut and cheesecake, which turned out to mostly be the same sponge cake, but with a half-inch layer of dense cheesecake filling on top. They scratched the itch for a sweet bite after a two-hour onslaught of meat, fat, salt and spice, but that’s about it.
In my past Korean barbecue experiences, our server regularly stopped at our table, both to clear dirty dishes and to replace the grill surface, which eventually becomes caked with burned bits of grease, meat and marinade. However, at KPOT, I had to flag down a staff member to replace our grill the one time it was changed during dinner. Had I not been proactive, and perhaps more importantly, had the knowledge that regularly replacing the grill throughout the meal is the standard at Korean barbecue restaurants, I’m not sure it would have been changed.
A table with a family with children were near a smaller booth with a couple on a date. They probably couldn’t hear what the other person was saying over the loud music, constant foot traffic and sizzling of meat cooking at each table, but they seemed to be enjoying themselves anyway. KPOT is open until 10 p.m. during the week and 11 p.m. on weekends, which I thought was unusual — until I saw the dozen or so people waiting for their table as we left around 9:30 p.m.
There’s no doubt that KPOT is a fun experience and considering the types of food available, not a bad value, especially for lunch, which is $20.99 and aside from the dinner-only shrimp and short ribs, offers just about all of my other favorite items. As an added bonus, it’ll be less crowded too.
There is a certain barrier of entry for any restaurant where diners cook their own food. I find it fun; others less fond of cooking may think it a needless chore. Even though I enjoyed the interactive aspect, the general lack of guidance means the learning curve is steeper than it needs to be. There is a placard at each table listing the approximate cooking times for the grill and hot pot, but like the notices posted by the buffet stations telling diners to avoid cross-contamination, signage can only do so much.
The Restaurant: KPOT Korean BBQ & Hot Pot, 3019 Erie Blvd. E., Syracuse
Takeout/Delivery? Dine-in. Some other KPOT locations offer takeout and delivery.
Reservations? No
Credit cards? Yes, with no added surcharge.
Noise level: Loud on a busy Saturday night.
Accessibility: Parking is no problem, though the buffet area can be crowded and difficult to navigate. Handicap-accessible tables available.
Parking: Private free parking lot.
Special diets? Vegetarian and gluten-free options are available, though limited. The pre-seasoned meats are not listed as gluten-free. Products containing peanuts, sesame and soy are found across the buffet, especially at the sauce bar.
Children’s menu? None listed. Kids ages 4 to 6 are $7.99 for lunch and $11.99 for dinner. Kids ages 7 to 10 are $11.99 for lunch and $15.99 for dinner.
Hours: Sunday to Thursday, from noon to 10 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, from noon to 11 p.m. Last seating one hour before close. Two-hour time limit.
Cost: Dinner for two with Korean barbecue and hot pot, non-alcoholic beverages, tax and 20% tip, was $107.50.
Jacob Pucci is a food and restaurant critic for syracuse.com and The Post-Standard. You can reach him at [email protected] and follow him on Facebook, Instagram, Threads or Twitter/X. Sign up for our free weekly Where Syracuse Eats newsletter here.