KPOT Korean BBQ & Hot Pot brings something new to Toms River
It is always exciting to try a new restaurant, especially one where the customers do the cooking.
The concept at the recently opened KPot Korean BBQ & Hot Pot in Toms River was new to me: It is the only restaurant around, besides Red Bank's The Melting Pot, where you choose your ingredients, order them yourself via tablet, and cook them at the table.
This is the first KPot at the Shore, with others coming to Neptune and Hazlet. Existing restaurants are in East Brunswick, Englewood, Kearny, Jersey City and Union, with more planned in Deptford, Lawrenceville and Secaucus.
I visited the Toms River restaurant, which filled the former Social 37 space in Crossroads Center, about a month after its August opening for a late Sunday night dinner. My group wasn't the only one curious about the restaurant: Every table was full, and there were a dozen parties ahead of us.
You can check your place online through a text from the restaurant, and if there's enough time, grab a drink at the bar before dinner. I didn't mind the wait — it gave me time to study the menu.
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When checking in with the host, you'll choose if you want barbecue, hot pot or both. Barbecue tables have a grill in the center, and hot pot is cooked on individual burners at each diner's spot at the table.
Once we were seated, we scrolled through the provided tablet and chose our ingredients. As our server explained, this is just like adding items to your Amazon cart, and once your order is ready, you send it to the kitchen.
For hot pot, first choose your cooking liquid: Thai tom yum, Szechuan spicy, tomato, herb, Japanese miso, Korean seafood tofu, and mushroom. Then the meat, which includes pork belly, brisket, chicken and lamb, all sliced paper-thin for quick cooking.
The fun stuff is next: You can add quail eggs, dumplings, shumai, fish cakes, shrimp, squid or fried tofu, then choose vegetables — mushrooms, bok choy, taro, corn, cabbage, daikon, pumpkin — and noodles, including udon, ramen and mei fun.
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For the barbecue, meat choices include beef, chicken and pork bulgogi, steak, short ribs, pork cheek and pork belly, among others. There's also seafood — octopus, garlic shrimp and calamari — and vegetables like sweet potatoes, onions and mushrooms.
A tableside grill guide tells you how long the meat needs to cook.
KPot is all you can eat, which is great if you like to try new foods — for me, that was taro and lobster balls — and you can order more of any ingredient at any time during the meal.
But don't be too greedy: To combat waste, the restaurant reserves the right to charge when customers over order and don't eat the food.
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Tips for a great meal
Study the menu before you go, especially if you plan to order both hot pot and barbecue. There is a lot to choose from.
Remember what you ordered! When the platters of meat and vegetables start arriving at the table, you'll want to know what goes where.
Visit the sauce bar, which is filled with bowls of sour and spicy sesame, sweet and spicy pepper, sweet and sour garlic, sweet and sour peanut, and ginger ponzu sesame sauces, among many others — plus spicy kimchi. You can use a sauce to flavor your hot pot, or spoon it over meat as it cooks on the barbecue. And don't skip the crispy mini egg rolls at the bar, which were my favorite way to taste the different sauces.
Don't expect a quick meal. The ingredients come to the table quickly, but part of the fun is watching your simmering pot and waiting for it to cook. A meal at KPot is a dinner and an experience.
Go: 2 Route 37, Toms River; 973-753-8177, thekpot.com. Prices range from $18.99 per person for lunch ($7.99 to $11.99 for kids) to $35 per person for dinner ($11.99 to $15.99 for kids).
Sarah Griesemer joined the USA TODAY NETWORK New Jersey in 2003 and has been writing all things food since 2014. Send restaurant tips to sgriesemer@gannettnj.com and subscribe to our Jersey Shore Eats newsletter.
This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Jersey Shore restaurants: KPOT Korean BBQ opens in Toms River
