De Zhuang Hot Pot

Food was delicious and the vibes were amazing. Service was quick & friendly! Will definitely make it back the next time I'm in the mood for hot pot.

The place is a little hard to find. When we first entered, we weren't sure if we were at the right place. The entrance actually leads to two restaurants. If you want hot pot, you need to take the stairs to the lower level. Once downstairs, the place is your typical hot pot spot. Honestly, nothing really jumped out to me as spectacular or bad. You order from an iPad and they bring the food out. Service was prompt and attentive. Our meats took a little while to come out, but as you can see from the photos, it was a pretty big platter. Soup base was good, meats were fresh and the watermelon was free. The decoration and ambiance is what you'd find at a typical hot pot restaurant. Overall, if you're looking for a decent hot pot place with no wait (6 pm on a Saturday), De Zhuang gets the job done.

Hot pot is downstairs and regular dining is upstairs. We arrived at 5pm on Saturday and there was only one other table doing pot there. By the time we left it was relatively empty downstairs but when you got upstairs it was buzzing with business. My friend and I came for hot pot, upon arrival there was wheel at the door we asked if we could spin it. The server who greeted us told us we both needed to spent $50 each to spin it and that it was after we had paid that we would be able to. We ended up spending $140 total for two people plus tip. We had missed ayce lunch, so ordered Al Carte. We ordered a soup combo of the chicken, bone broth. Somehow it came with tomato soup as an option, which we did not select but we went with it sure. The presentation for the meat was instagramable. The soup took some time to heat up. Broth tasted fine. I liked that you could order via tablet. Sauce wasn't included. You had to pay 2.99 per person and the sauce area was a disappointment. There was gnats flying around, and bugs. Should have had a cover for each sauce. Honestly we should have asked for a refund for that. Service was fine but now remember that wheel we saw when we entered the restaurant? Now let's get back to the wheel, it says $50 per person. So common sense understanding would be each person gets a spin. We both spin, my friend lands in century egg. And I land on the fruit tea. The server tells us to sit and wait and she will get our prizes. We got my fruit tea pretty fast. We sat waiting for my friend's century egg, after 15 minutes. She asked one of the servers for the status and she said the kitchen is working on it. We wait another 15minutes before we flag our server from downstairs to Inquire about it again. He came back and said the owner said it was per table not per person. But we pointed out it's written per person the way it was written in english and if he meant per table then he should have indicated it. Even a 5 year old would understand it as per person by the way it was worded. We told him that they should have to communicate it clearly to avoid wasting our time. Our server said he will talk to the owner. A few minutes later a different server came out to try to explain the wheel. We told her it was written incorrectly, she then explained that it's per table but each table has a different quota they have to spend spending on how many guests before being able to spin the wheel. My friend had to explain to her why the way it's written would lead to misunderstanding and false advertisements. We agreed to accept another fruit tea since we had already wasted our time. My advice is to just remove the wheel if it's going to be so complicated and since we heard different answers from different servers. It sounds too confusing to implement. Maybe do stamp cards instead.

Our sister John Ricardo was amazing! He helped us pick great sake. The tomato base broth was so so so good. It was chill in here and clean and calm. I loved it. Can't wait to return !

Our waiter Jhon Ricardo was spectacular today, he was very observant and was very polite!

Might be the best hotpot I've ever eaten! Our server Jhonricardo was really friendly and helpful!

The food is good and our server John Ricardo is fantastic. Friendly and attentive. Strongly recommended.

Good service and lots of food. Unique presentation of the food. They had three hot pot broths for you to mix and match.

Great food! Amazing variety with fresh ingredients and good appetizers. Try the scallion pancakes.