iCook Buffet

I am a pretty frequent guest here and the food is just OK, at best.
Last visit, I came with 4 family members from OT. They forgot to bring a few things and when they finally remembered, the grill was already off and we were full. Service sucked.
After we paid the bill, they came to our table to let us know we did not leave enough tip and wanted to know why. Who the F are they to tell people how much to tip? You know your service sucked. That’s why you got what you got! Besides, we didn’t even leave the table yet, who said we weren’t going to leave a lil something on the table? Just rude.
I’ve eaten here at least 4x’s in the past 6 weeks because I used to like bringing my American friends here for the kbbq/​hotpot experience and I travel 45min for this but that turned me off so bad, they just lost my business. I’ll be going to Favor in BK.

I was looking forward to coming here after hearing about the all you can eat Korean bbq and hot pot for $ 32. The quality of the raw ingredients is not bad for the price but what really disappointed me is the horrendous service. The lady tells me that a waiter will come to cook the meat but there’s there is only 5 servers for a restaurant that has over 30 tables. I got items that I did not order at least 4 – 5 times. The idea of bbq and hot pot is fantastic but the way they manage this place absolutely downright sucks.

Came here for dinner with my family. Nicely environment, good service, fresh and wide varieties of food plus unbeatable cost performance. I would recommend this place to my friends for sure !

Great place to have dinner with friends!!! Not very expensive and they have lots of things you can eat! All my friends love here!

I hadn’t known about this place for awhile, until my friend introduced me to it and man did I miss out. First time I went my friends and I got sat in their VIP room for ayce hotpot (no extra charge). I’ve been here multiple times and have done the ayce hotpot and ayce bbq, and to me the price was worth it (especially for the amount of food my friends and me eat). For the ayce hotpot and Kbbq on a weekend night it came out to about $ 40 a head for my party of 5 (ordered some drinks as well). This was a pretty good deal since we got both, usually at Picnic Garden the other Kbbq spot I go to it comes out to $ 40 a person for just ayce kbbq so you’re definitely getting more for your money here. Also the servers attentively cook your Kbbq at your table and regular change the grills.
The place also has a nice clean look to it and if your sitting in the VIP room you’ll get the feeling that you’re dining somewhere unique. If you have friends from out of town or are a person who really loves hotpot, check this place out !
There is a parking lot right across the street, but on busy nights sometimes it’ll take awhile to find parking.

Bad service, be ready even you order few times they still wont get you what you want.
So what’s the point of buffet and they only give u few dishes and always leave out your order.
Tried few times, Not going back. :(

$ 22for each people that’s a good price fresh food and you can get your own hotpot we called a lot of the food carefully you have to finish don’t wasted food

Very nice place clean and beautiful light my wife and my daughter very like it we definitely come back

not sure why this ayce restaurant got 3 stars, but I like coming here. It’s my go-​to hot pot place if you just want to overindulge. First of all, It’s all you can eat hot pot, you obviously can’t have the type of service similar to a sit-​down restaurant. Most of the time waiters are busying going everywhere, it’s not like they’re doing nothing and standing around.
This restaurant is definitely made for the younger generations. the music, LED lights, movie posters (they always have the latest movie’s posters, amazing), raffle lottery, selfie machines, etc.
It’s about $ 30 for ACYE hot pot and kbbq. I only come here for the hot pot. If you come to a Chinese hot pot place to get Korean bbq, you’re playing yourself. If you want Korean bbq, go to a Korean restaurant.
Hot pot had a good selection, quality & fresh is good enough, definitely not Dolar Shop quality. Got a big list of veggies meats and some seafood. Sauce station was clean and accessible to everyone.

Let’s just say we’ve been asking for more meat than we’ve been served meat. One word; AMAZING!
(/​sarcasm)
Please get your staff together and stop trying fill us up with fried foods that come out instantly so we can’t enjoy the carnivore food :(

It is really a 3.5 star rating…
I like that it is unlimited and the choices on the menu is plenty (from fish balls to fatty beef to all the veggies you can think of)… I really liked the sauce bar too but you really have to know what you are doing or else your sauce will not come out good.
The only issue I have was probably the service. they were a bit slow and forgetful. common’ ppl it doesn’t take that long for you to take out something from the fridge and display it nicely on a small dish… And by the way. what happened to service w/​a smile people?! I guess it is a korean owned place so. that’s what you are going to get the majority of the time.
Other than that, there is parking across the street. so that is why I rounded up instead of down.

All-​you-​can-​eat buffet with meat, 6 soups, massive veggie options… yes please!
Located slightly hidden off of Main Street Flushing, that doesn’t deter customers from this bustling hotpot restaurant on a Friday night. Two friends and I were seated immediately at 6:45pm.
A waiter immediately takes your soup order and appears at your table by the time your back from the sauce bar. I made my usual peanut/​sesame sauce combo, but it was extremely oily. Bleh, the sauces at Spring Shabu Shabu are better.
They have a laminated, 2-​page menu of vegetable and meat options in both Chinese and English with pictures. Using a combination of my elementary Chinese, loosely translated English, and pictures our group ordered a selection of beef, lamb, seafood, watercress, napa cabbage, fish balls, and vegetables.
Our table ordered the tomato soup, original flavor, and pickled soup flavor. Interestingly the tomato turned out REALLY sour, while the pickled flavor was not sour at all. Pickled was my favorite of the three as it comes with bits of «sour cabbage» 酸菜 in there too. Original flavor is a basic pork bone soup, very flavorful, but fatty and oily.
Go easy on ordering the plates of meat at first, they’re huge! Remember, you can always order more later. 3 girls, 2 meat plates and we still couldn’t finish all of it.

This is probably one of the worst restaurants I have ever gone to in Flushing. My family and I came here for an early Chinese New Year celebration and the food was beyond subpar. For $ 32pp AYCE hotpot/​BBQ combo, you can get far better food at other places. IMO you can probably get better street food with that money.
Soup Base — Herbal and the Original Broth tasted exactly the same. The Herbal broth had no flavor in it whatsoever. You’re basically dipping your food in plain tap water.
Meats/​Seafood — I barely touched any of the raw meats (lamb, beef, pork, duck, chicken, fillet fish slices) because they were questionably brown in coloring instead of bright red. I thought the fish slices tasted a little funky and my family said the meat tasted a little off too.
I have never gone to an AYCE place and end up only eating most of the veggies and noodles… until today. Sorry iCook, I will not be returning! I also hope that no one gets sick after tonight.

3.5 stars = rounded up for the great service.
This restaurant has been the nicest looking hot pot restaurant we have been to. AYCE for $ 21. They have a pretty good selection of meats (lean meat, chicken, fish, spicy fish, shrimp, crabs, several kinds of meat balls) and veggies. We tried the herbal broth which was true to its name. It was truly «herbal» but surprisingly a little oily. While most of the meat was good, the spicy fish was the only one that we did not reorder. It tasted like a lot of dry rubbed cayenne pepper. All heat and no taste.
Our waiter was very attentive. As soon as he saw us picking up our menus, he would be right over to take our orders. He would clear our plates and bring new clean ones before I could even think of getting a new one.
iCook has earned a spot on my list of shabu shabu/​hot pot restaurants to return to. Plus there is a large metered parking lot right across the street (and not way over-​priced), making it convenient to dine there.

Good job iCook Buffet, you just earned yourself a 1 star. I didn’t think the service was good so I left like a 12% tip. They chased me back and said I had to pay 15%. If gratitude was monitory, why would anyone called it gratitude?! If I was mean enough, I could have taken all the tips back.
I don’t want to comment on the food. I would never go back again.

AYCE hotpot is the main attraction and it’s cheaper than most other places.
The place is packed on weekends, but dishes came quickly for my table. You might have to wait on a short line to make your own sauce (s).
I’m not a huge fan of hotpot-​style dishes but iCook is near the top of my list if I ever have a hotpot craving.

All you can eat hotpot for $ 22? yes please!
Came here with a few of my friends on a Friday night. Was seated at the booth, you get your individual hotpot which I like, that way you control the flavor of the soup and temperature and no one is eating what you put in there. There are some seafood items that come at an extra charge. I like that there was such a big variety of menu items. The menu comes with pictures and has both English and Chinese. You order and the waitress put in the order immediately on an iPad. The sauce bar is in the back. Gets extremely humid and hot since everyone there are so many pots boiling, suggest wearing short sleeves, even in the middle of winter and something you don’t mind smelling like hotpot soup.
Overall, enjoyed a lot, with tax and tip, ended up paying around $ 28 per person (we didn’t order anything extra off the menu). Would definitely come back here again next time I am in the area and craving hotpot.

Being a hot pot aficionado, I had to give iCook a try when it first opened earlier in 2015. Since then, I’ve regularly visited here at least once a month. Why, you ask?
1) Cost: $ 21.99 per person for all-​you-​can-​eat shabu shabu. Although it’s not as cheap as Spring Shabu Shabu, iCook’s price includes meat, whereas Spring charges an extra fee per plate of meat/​seafood that eventually racks up to more than what you’d pay at iCook.
2) Korean BBQ. That’s right, they have grills at each large table for onsite grilling of kalbi and other Korean meats. The cost of this is just $ 11 more per person, but if you have room in your stomach for it, definitely give it a try! (Unfortunately I can’t give a food review as I haven’t opted for this option yet, but I will update when I do!)
3) Broth selection: GOLD. Any menu that has a spicy ma la broth and a herbal broth gets a star in my book!
4) Ingredient selection. Not a lot of hot pot places have tong hao (garland chrysanthemum in English). Even less have dou miao (pea shoots). This place has both. It also has pre-​marinated spicy beef and spicy fish fillet options, both of which are delicious.
5) Service: not bad. All of the waiters carry around iPads to take orders and send them to the kitchen. Most of them are friendly and can speak English. Sometimes the waiters are a little difficult to flag down, but unless you need your plates changed every five minutes, I say it’s okay.
This is my new favorite place. Just beware, however, that this is most people’s new favorite place, so plan to wait at least 30 minutes for a table if you’re arriving around dinner rush. At least they have free Wi-​Fi and an on-​the-​spot Polaroid printing machine to keep you entertained, and the TVs around the restaurant show trailers of upcoming movies. (They need to update the movie posters around the restaurant though!)
Update 2÷4÷2016: They took a last minute reservation for a party of 8 at 9:15 pm on a Sunday. Yay!

This place is more like a 3.5 stars, but I can’t get my last experience out of my head right now, so I’ll just stick with this lower end of the spectrum.
The first time I came here it was a magical experience. It was a freeeeezing cold day and my friends and I were starving! We stormed in here approx. 5 when there was no wait, and stuffed or faces with loads of sliced meats (lamb, lamb, lamb), few veggies, fish balls, and various balls of sorts. (particularly fuzhou ball! *insert praise hands here*).
The first time was a ⁵⁄₅ experience, especially for an ayce hotpot place for only $ 22.
However, the last time I came here… the sauce area (for newbies, the area in which you make your sauce… which usually just turns into some confused variation of spicy soy sauce)…was disgusting! It was a hot mess, which seriously affected my ratings. Still pretty good at a 3, but if they cleaned up the sauce area, and also perhaps the utensils surrounding this area, it would be an instant 4.5. :)
Come here for unlimited hotpot, please.

They increased the price here by a dollar for each option since I’ve last came here, but no matter onto the review!
came here for the first time for the hot pot option, which was fairly standard, nothing too out of the ordinary from what you would get at a normal ayce hot pot place, they have a fair selection of meats and seafood along with their processed meats and veges not the cheapest option in flushing, but you do get a pretty decent variety
Was extremely surprised by the korean bbq here though… its done fairly well for a chinese establishment, at least in my opinion. though they don’t have any of their meats marinated in that fiery gochujang sauce they do have a great selection of meat and have a pretty awesome L. A Galbi and galbi, which was extremely succulent marbled with a great layer of fat, and coated in an extremely enticing and sweet soy marinade. For 26 bucks the selection here is pretty good for the korean bbq at least

$ 22 for all you can eat hotpot. $ 24 for all you can eat bbq. $ 32 for all you can eat hot pot and bbq. The party has to all pick the same option. Otherwise they will charge you $ 32 each person because they assume people will be sharing hot pot and bbq.
The price for AYCE can’t be beat. The food and sauce choices were pretty standard. Crab, shrimp, squid and mussels were no extra charge. Oyster, lobster, etc were an extra charge.
This place takes reservations so get a reservation if you can. We came on a Sunday night as a group of 10 with no reservation and had to wait 30 minutes, which wasn’t too bad. There are private rooms in the back. The rooms fit 10 – 13 people but are small and there isn’t much extra room for moving around in the rooms.
The service was pretty good although some of the waiters seemed a bit stressed due to the amount of customers.
The only thing I wished they had was dessert included at the end, which some of the other AYCE places have. Some fruit or ice cream at the end would have been nice. Other than that, I would definitely recommend this place!