Flaming Spice

Worst hot pot I have ever ha before. We ordered the spicy fish. It was horrible. other dishes were really small Mountain smells too disgusting so we did not finish the dinner. Avoid

My first actual review that I will post because that’s how badly I feel that my experience should be known…
My first time having an AYCE hot pot and it was the worst experience ever. We came with some friends on a Saturday early evening to try it out. The price was $ 13.99/ person. We walked in and no one was there. Went to see the side dishes first to see what they offered, and there was nothing there. When we asked the waitress, she said it’ll come out done worry.
Well surely it did come out but just oranges, SALTY cucumbers, SALTY eggs, SALTY seaweed thing, and oranges. And the rest of the trays were empty. The sauce area was old and needed refills. We ordered our meat and veggies and when it came, the veggies were all old. Our enoki mushrooms cane out with the bottom portion dirty and uncut and and when we asked for a knife so we can cut it ourselves she just looked stunned. The meat was okay except for intestines that looked like throw up. When we asked for extra things we needed, we has to either ask 2 or 3 times or they just brought us something difference. Then more people came in and there was still only one waitress which took FOREVER for any of our items to come out.
Then it started getting dark so we asked them for some lights to be turned on and she said oh this is ok and that she can’t turn on any lights. So the four of us were eating in the dark using our iPhone flashlights to light the pot for each other. If u order a soda, u only get ONE refill so don’t get tricked. We asked for hot sauce and it took a long time trying to explain to them what a hot sauce was.
We actually saw another table who walked in 5 mintues after, who didnt even finish half of their food, paid, and just walked out. They were complaining about the food and the service as well.

Not even worth1 star. Do not come here — Worst Hot Pot place ever!
Came here for dinner and ordered ox fail and mushroom broth. Both bros tasted the same with a light chicken broth. no flavor really… Asked for fish, shrimp, and beef balls. Gave us a lot of fish balls that were stuffed with beef. And when asked for the correct items, they finally said they didn’t have beef or shrimp balls.
Huge language barrier. Had difficulty asking for spicy sauce, had to describe the color, and explain on what spicy sauce was. Asked for 4 plates of beef, and only came out with 1 beef and 1 lamb (??).
Enoki mushroom ends were not cut, so we asked for a knife, and waitress looked really lost. Then explained why we needed it, and then took to the kitchen in the back to get it cut.
Intestines did not look good. Buffet was pathetic, everything was salty. Soy sauce egg was not fresh — mushy, no steamed egg even though there was a sign. Pig ears and seaweed salad were extremely salty.
Not all the lights were on, and it got dark and towards the end we could not see anything inside the pot. Asked them to turn it on brighter, but they couldn’t (??)
Staff was not helpful and were either no where to be found most of the time, or did not pay any attention customers.
Bathroom was gross too! Women’s restroom had a single faucet, and when lifted up to turn on, it almost broke off! Q Tip jar in bathroom too, and there were some used Q Tips there ip with orange and yellow ends. Eeewwww!!!
Paid $ 13.99, but it should be $ 5.00. I’m never coming back though!!!

Destined for overtaking/​closing.
Broth has changed and is now plainer, more MSG, less broth ingredients
Ayce lunch 13.99 is sad … ac was not one with the door open, Meat and Veggies were subpar due to the fact that there are less people eating here…
Go to World Hot Pot down the street!

First and foremost, this restaurant is All You Can Eat (AYCE) for roughly around $ 20ish a person, not bad. They have a large selection of items you may choose from and if I recall correctly, 4 different types of broths and you may select the spicy level of the soup if you go with the spicy broth, I can not remember all the types of broth but the ones I got were the oxtail and spicy (medium) broth. They bring it out and like most Chinese hot pot places, the soups are in the same pot by separated down the middle.
I think the one thing that separates this place from other hot pot places is that they have side dishes buffet style, sort of like a salad bar, but of course with taiwanese treats like spicy fried fish, steamed tofu, noodles, some other fried things, seaweed, etc. You could probably get full off that by itself, but you didn’t come to a Hot Pot place to get full off side items. Also, this place has loads of ingredients for you to make your dipping sauce; from green onions to seseme seeds, eggs to satay, crushed peanuts to peanut sauce, rare egg to soy sauce, etc… you get the picture, they have A LOT! I would say about 15 ingredients.
Onto the food, it was pretty good and will leave you stuffed, while the quality of the cut meats like the beef wasn’t as fresh as a place where you would pay by the dish, it does a good job for an ayce.
No complaints on service.

AYCE hotpot is totally not worth it! I’d much rather go to Little Sheep or Ichi Ichi for the same price or even cheaper.
My boyfriend and I had to wave down the servers multiple times since they didn’t check on us even once.
The food was just meh. they also have a buffet style (free), but the food had been sitting there all day so it was a little gross. Won’t be coming back again.

I’m done, stick a fork in me.
I’ve given Flaming Spice the benefit of the doubt multiple times and it has gone downhill significantly over the last 6 months. Initially, I thought it was an ownership change that didn’t affect the menu very much.
But yesterday, I learned that the Beer Duck soup base is gone (because it’s too oily???). Even the chicken wings at the appetizer bar tasted too sweet and lacked their former punch. And now the employees want you to use individual burners unless you sit under a vent so we had to move to another table in order to get a big pot.
Everything just tasted so bland and mediocre and we were really disappointed.

The food here is decent, but do you really want to pay $ 20 for decent all you can eat hot pot? I think not. I had a half regular soup base and the other half i forgot but it was spicy. The ladies came around in carts (like at dimsum) for veggies & meat options. There is also a separate section for noodles, wings, and some dessert selections (like fried red bean sesame balls). I wasn’t in LOVE with any of the extras they had.

3 ½
This is a nice spacious place with lots of variety in food, and very laid back.
Pro:
Lots of variety, with lamb, beef, shrimp, clams, and different veggies.
The hot foods was a good option but I didn’t have much. I like the chicken wings though. The sauce station was okay… I was happy I got to mix what I like.
Con:
okay onto the food, I’m not a fan of the dumplings or steamed egg. The dumplings tasted a little weird, and the steamed egg had the consistency of hk style dessert «dun dan» but it was salty with lots of sesame oil.
The pot of broth had too much junk in there, I know its suppose to add flavor, but it would be nice if that stuff was filtered out b/​c it was just making me lose my food in the broth or digging up stuff I didn’t want, and making me over cook my food.
Overall food was about a 3 and service pushed it up to 3 ½.
Staff were nice and friendly and cleared my plates quick and answered my question about the fish ball filling, apparently its some sort of pork!

2 — 2.5 stars.
$ 20 for AYCE hot pot. Each pot can be split into 2 broths, and they have I think 5 broths to choose from — mushroom, spicy chicken, tomato fish, spicy fish, oxtail are the ones I remember. We got half oxtail and half spicy fish (medium), and neither were THAT great. The oxtail was too salty (though it did have several large pieces of oxtail that were quite tasty), and the spicy fish was kind of oily. And medium was too hot for us, so we kept gravitating towards the oxtail.
They bring the food by on carts and you just choose what you want. They had pretty much everything I wanted, and I’d recommend the beef and lamb for meat. Stay away from the pork; it was weirdly chewy and soft.
There’s also a section of ready-​to-​eat hot foods along the back wall, with a variety of things. Only things I got from there were red oil wontons (the .5 star I’m giving them is for having this — I LOVE these), steamed egg, and fruit for dessert. In this section is also the «sauce bar» for you to make your own dipping sauce.
Overall, the idea is great, and the price is good, but the quality just doesn’t match other places. I like hot pot because of the broth — it hits the spot on those cold winter nights or just when you need a good, hearty soup. The broth here didn’t leave me feeling warmed from the inside.

Honestly, this place is kinda dirty. And not just oh hey it’s so good that we don’t mind the slightly dirty sauce bar or carts bringing around the dishes but rather the «hey I feel like I’m getting served stuff that was found in the garbage dump» kind of dirty.
Stuff was greasy, lacking in flavor, and just dirty! The sauce bar had just bits and crap from all the other sauces mixed together. I seriously think I had to spit out stuff on a few occasions that shouldn’t have been in the dishes. For my conscience’s sake, I will pretend that it’s just seeds of fruit…
So why did I give it 2 stars? Because it’s all you can eat, I was hungry, and it’s cheap. That said, do yourself a favor and go to Ichi Ichi or Little Sheep.

The only thing that Flaming Spice really has going for itself is that it’s all-​you-​can-​eat. For you folks who care only about quantity (and not quality), then this is the place for you. My friends and I actually only ventured into this place per a friend’s recommendation. Knowing that they were newly opened, we did not have such high expectations; we surely did not expect it to be as disappointing either!
We were the only patrons there, but service was really slow. We had a party of seven and they did not seem to have a large enough table to accommodate our party. We ended up having to sit at two separate tables. Their menu was really short and confusing too. What we deciphered was that we had the option of one broth flavor or two broth flavors. If we opt for two broth flavors, one of which must be plain. We tried the beer duck broth and spicy fish broth. Both broths were extremely flavorful; however, they were way too overwhelmed with chili oil. It was pretty bad, because I could not sip on the soup without choking on the oil. Their selection, in terms of vegetables and meats, was very limited too. They literally had like four different vegetables, which included mushrooms.
I think they have a lot of room for improvement. They just need to take all this feedback into consideration. Would I come back? No.

We came here to eat, not to spend 5 min. to figure out how to use the stupid menu !
Waitress gave us the electronic menu and left without one word, hello??? Not even bother to ask if we have been here before? No chance to taste the food, we left after 5 min. trying to figure out the menu, n had a few sips of tasteless tea on our table…
What a shame …:(we went straight to Jazz cat in the same plaza for good food n most importantly? Great service!

All you can eat is never a good idea, IS IT??? Hell yes it is. $ 19.99 are you outta your mind. I haven’t had ayce shabu in years. And this place does it pretty well.
First you pick your soup base. We went with the half ma-​la fish (spicy spicy hot red pot of fire) and half light broth. You can also go full spice or full vegetarian pot, chicken pot, duck pot… Then you can head over to the appetizer bar, stock full of get you full goodies. Seaweed, pig ear, soft steamed egg, wontons, lamb pot stickers, green onion pancake, noodles, green bean noodles, desserts, and a full sauce bar. All you can sauce! Saucy…
They have dim-​sum style people walking around with food carts. There is a meat cart full of beef, pork, and lamb. There is another fish ball/​tofu cart. Full of balls, all kinds of tofus, imitation crabs, pork blood, intestines, tripes, and a veggie cart full of tong hao, napa, bamboo shoots, lotus root, mushrooms, taros, vermicelli, and other leafy greens. All you can grab.
Walk in, and roll out. Beware, the spicy gets spicier as the night goes on.
Disclaimer: Most of the clientele is China Chinese. Not that I have any preference or whatever. But in case you don’t like hearing that thick China Chinese accent, then… you are warned.

I don’t know who these 4 – 5 star people are, but I assure you, this place was disgusting. The food is all you can eat, but mind you it’s $ 20/​person and they don’t really tell you that. And the all you can eat? It’s not of any quality ingredients. The meat was tough and cheap tasting. It was definitely way too overpriced. The buffet wasn’t well stocked and the sauces were separating like they’ve been there too long. (The Asian BBQ sauce was watery??)
The broth was OK. Spicy fish with small spice. The fish tasted strange and the texture wasn’t quite right. A bit slimy.
When we complained about the bill, the waitress asked the «manager» and the «manager» said no but didn’t even come to our table to greet us or explain or anything. It was really horrible. I hate this place. Outrageously expensive for subpar food, horrible service.

Finally, my 100^th! I wanted to pick a special place to for this special review.
Background story:
Growing up as a Chinese kid with a mama that grew up in Sichuan, means we ate a lot of HOT POT! I guess you can kinda call me a Hot Pot connoisseur since mom is always taking me to new places or cooking new styles.
Value:
Whenever it gets cold, our family would always hot pot! In China, its super cheap, so we go out to eat a lot. But hot pot here gets super expensive ($ 25-​$ 40 per person) if you wanna fill your tummy with good stuff. Flaming Spice offers all the delicious hot pot experience for only $ 20! You can eat to your hearts content. This place kills most of the competition just on value alone!
Taste/​Quality:
I had the spicy fish pot (consists of catfish and all sorts of herbs and spices) on mild spicy. It was full of flavor; and for most of the stuff I dropped in, didnt even need to dip into any sauces.
All the veggies and meats were very fresh. I usually dont enjoy beef as much at hot pot (usually go for the lamb), because its usually frozen and isnt as tender. But Their beef slices were on point, super tender, and tasted super fresh!
The tech stuff:
The hot pots serve here is the Chong Ching style. It’s a bit different from the Sichuan style but similar. Mongolian, Taiwanese, and Japanese styles are completely different. I grew up eating super spicy food, but I’ve learned that eating super spicy food kills your taste buds. So I specifically chose mild, so I can taste the true flavor of the broth. Also a lot of spicy dishes use the spiciness to hide unpleasant flavor.
Special shout out to the servers:
The way they serve the food here is kinda dim sum. You just pick up whatever you want to drop in your hot pot. The servers that helped us were super nice! One of the girls that really made an impression was Amy! She was super helpful on choosing which pot to get. Shes always smiling and her English is really good. It’s kind of rare for places like this to have a fluent English speaker.
Bonus!
Everyone loves the little extras. The hot pot is the main event here, but their little appetizers are AMAZING! I swear their little Chinese appetizers buffet is wayyy better than a lot of restaurants that I’ve been to. The green onion pancake is sooo good. The cold noodle is ON POINT! They should let me pay to just eat the appetizer buffet… Its that good! I heard that they make everything in house, so everything at the buffet is fresh and delicious.
Closing statement:
This place is great for a big party full of hungry people, its great value, good service, delicious foods, and finding parking is a breeze! I’ve always wished for a place like this, thank you flaming spice for answering my prayers!

AYCE hot pot at a VERY decent price! ($ 20)
This place is perfect for big groups, a limited budget and large stomachs.
As for the food and broth, it was just OK for me. I tried many of the small appetizer items from the AYCE appetizer bar and was not impressed either. The selection for hot pot items is small and sometimes it takes a while to find a cart that has what you want. Hot pot items are delivered to tables in a dim-​sum type style so you have to flag down waiters as they walk by.
Ingredients are fresh and restaurant is clean. Wouldn’t say it’s the best hot pot I’ve ever had, but definitely a good deal!

$ 19.99 AYCE HOT POT w/​many soup base options that are just as tasty as Little Fat Sheep? I AM DOWN LIKE THE ECONOMY
the staff here is SO FRIENDLY & the restaurant is clean… it’s almost unlike any chinese restaurant you’ll ever step foot in!
basically you first choose your soup base (which can be separated into spicy and non spicy) then just get all the raw meat, seafood, and veggies from rolling carts that come around, & cook it in the pot at your table!
they also have a buffet bar with pickled meats, soup, dim sum, & TONS of dipping sauces (as if the soups weren’t flavored enough?!)
—-we got the fish based soup which was yummy but kind of annoying that they leave the «already cooked fish that flavors the broth» in the pot. since it was hard to distinguish the things i just added
—-got everything from beef, pork, shrimp, fish balls, tofu, veggies, mushrooms, etc!
—-liked the green onion pancake, red bean mochi balls, and pickled meats from the buffet!
PLUS $ 1.99 milk tea drinks, although they aren’t anything special

All you can eat hot pot!
This place has an interesting set up. You order a broth and level of spiciness. For the meats and vegetables, they are wheeled around dim sum style. At first I thought it would be tough getting enough food at a time, but the staff was pretty good at making their rounds and didn’t hesitate to give us 4 orders of meat at the same time.
All the condiments are at a bar and they also have extras like noodles, dumplings, green onion pancakes, etc.
Meats and Veggies
Pork
Beef
Lamb
Assorted Meatballs
Squid
Taro
Spinach
Enoki Mushrooms
Sauce
Soy
Peanut
3 Different chili sauces
Oils
and like 5 other ones I couldn’t identify.
$ 20 per person. This place is pretty small too. Rainy Sunday night at 6:30pm– 1 hour wait for a table of 8. They don’t have too many tables that accommodate a table bigger than 5.

I’m not a fan of hot pot but for what it’s worth, the place isn’t all that bad. I stuck to the side dishes at the AYCE bar. We came when they had just opened and the entire menu was in Chinese but luckily the staff spoke English. One of the girls walked us through everything and even came by throughout the night with the meat and vegetable carts to make sure we were okay.
Unless you have a big appetite, I suggest you come with a big party. They give you a big ass (excuse my French) bowl of whichever soup base you choose to go with. We decided to get the spicy soup base with beef. It definitely fits the bill of being spicy! Since it’s all so oily, it would probably be smart to drink tea throughout your meal. Better yet, get some boba milk tea! Yes, they offer an assortment of flavored boba tea but at an extra cost. We got all the add-​ons from mushroom to fake crab meat to fish balls.
The only time you’d have to get your fat butt off the chair is to get the side dishes at the side bar. They had all the cold appetizer dishes like the spicy pig ears! Their steamed egg in a cup and fried dumplings were delish. We even got seconds!
Call me crazy but I’d definitely come back. Next time I’m coming with reinforcements!