Niu Pot

The place is clean, and the food was delicious. Loved the whole winter melon pot idea. If you’re not afraid of beef tongue, get it! They gave us a large amount of it. Watermelon juice was fresh and yummy. A bit pricey, and would recommend coming here with more than two people. I would probably come back again for the pumpkin pot with a group of friends. Overall pretty good, but service could be better (no tea was served till later after we ordered, and the waitress had to ask again if we had ordered after 10 minutes in putting in the order, took awhile for the raw food to arrive). Overall a 3.5 experience, rounding it up because of the food.

gloria was a really good waitress. She spoke fluent English and as an abc I really needed that.

On a cold winter afternoon, it’s always nice to go for hotpot to warm up. I went here for the winter melon hotpot and had a decent experience. The hype of having a winter melon hotpot had drawn me here. Some of the things my friends and I ordered were: cuttlefish, meatballs, squid, mushroom, beef strips, lettuce, some type of glass noodles, and scallops. The food took a little longer than expected to come and the service was OK. It took a while for the waitress to refill our tea and to cut up our melon. Overall, decent experience.

I wish we had more places like this in San Francisco. The winter melon was amazing. We came here with a large group of people, and the staff was very helpful in getting us a big enough table. They were very attentive and helped us order. Not only that, but I must have had 1000 bowls of their peanut appetizer. Everything is really fresh. They care about hot pot and it really shows. Not only that, but they have a great selection of beers which seems rare in Flushing. I will definitely make this a regular spot for hot pot. Sorry Elmhurst!

I would give this place a NEGATIVE 5 star if I could.
WARNIG: come here at your own risk! I’ve never had to write such a bad review about any business on Yell but I’m absolutely adamant about this place!
The staff here are not only clueless and incompetent but the my also LIE to patrons in their face about there mistakes.
Here is our experience today: after waiting for over 30 minutes, one of our party incidentally overheard the hostess giving our table to someone else and telling them to keep quiet about it.
When we confronted the staff, a guy with bald head and glasses LIED to us and alleged that the other party, who does not have the basic common courtesy to wait for their turn, «made reservations earlier in the day» when the hostess already admitted that she made a mistake!
We then requested to speak to a manger, the bald head LIAR claimed he’s the manager! Wow, beware people, the MANAGER at this place is a LIAR!
They don’t have the basic competency to seat the patrons in order but then insults our intelligence by LYING about it!!!
Message to the OWNER: if you want to stay in business in the competitive Flushing market and in this bad economy, you need to hire staff that are at least HONEST! Otherwise, you are wasting all your money spent on advertising and marketing.
Message to the bald head LYING so-​called manager: don’t insult your customer’s intelligence and go get another job bc you do not deserve to be in the service industry!
We will also be voicing our discontent to our friends and on other social medias.
RESPONSE TO THE OWNER:
While I appreciate you taking your time to read and respond to Unilocal reviews, I can unequivocally reassure you that there is absolutely no misunderstanding or miscommunication between anyone and especially between your manager and hostess.
Not only did one of our party member clearly heard the conversation in which the waitress told the cutting party to stay at the table and stay quiet AFTER they refused her demand for them to leave the table but I specifically asked the hostess to stay during the entire conversation we had with your incompetent manager. Furthermore, there were plenty witness to the entire conversation exchange where your manager pretty much admitted his DISHONEST conduct.
Whether you as the owner wants to take affirmative steps to correct and properly train your staff or let them take your business down is completely up to you. But the fact remains unchanged that we caught your staff’s LYING in action.
I have already wasted enough time on this unhappy event.

Honestly, I don’t understand all the negative reviews for this place. I have to say my experience here was excellent!
Service A++
BBQ Food A+
Cleanliness A++
Only downside is the pricing on certain items such as the rice and udon $ 2-​$ 4. However, I expected if you simply look at the décor and location.
The wait staff was extremely attentive, maybe because it’s a slow weekday. If it is busy, it is understandable if the service is a bit slow since the staff might be overwhelmed.
— Our servers changed the plates 4+ times.
— Waiter was not pushy, he suggested that we ordered enough and could order more later if we are still hungry.
— Water pitcher was always refilled
— Empty plates were cleared away promptly
It was my graduation celebration, so we ordered a bit more. the bill for 4 ppl came to about $ 170 including tip.
I would definitely recommend this place.

Idea was cool but services are awful! Food only ok…$$$$$$$$$$$$$ totally not worth the money!

When I first heard about the winter melon hotpot, I thought it sounded weird and somewhat gross. However, after having tried it at this restaurant, I admit it changed my mind.
The winter melon is not an actual melon, but more akin to a pumpkin and daikon. The melon hotpot tasted okay after the soup was cooked, but can’t say it was worth the extra $ 20. The next time I come, I plan on ordering their normal hotpot.
Place had a modern atmosphere, which I really liked.
The hotpot soup was fresh with little or no MSG.
Recommend prime beef, beef tongue, fried tofu, corn, mushrooms, vegetables.
Lambs have a particular odor, so check with those on your table before dipping a piece in the soup.
I also recommend you order a small portion first and add on more as you eat.

Heard about the wintermelon hot pot, and came here to see what all the fuss is about. We arrived before 6:30 on a Saturday night, and we need to wait for about ten minutes before we get seated (the waitress did get us a menu while we were waiting) The restaurant is pretty small compared to other hot pot restaurants, so if you come with more than four people, you may consider making reservations.
The wintermelon is placed in a pot, and you cook everything in the wintermelon. After you are done, the waitress would cut up the wintermelon for you to eat.
Honesly, other than how cute the wintermelon looks in pictures, the food quality is just the same as other hotpot places in Flushing, the broth in the winter melon is good, but not worth the $ 20 + $ 3/​head. The electric stove, however, is more powerful than other places, we often need to lower it so that the broth wouldn’t spill.
Our bill came to $ 40+ per person, which is more than AYCE hotpot places, and we didn’t order a lot of food.

The idea of melon pot is great, but it should at least have some decorations for the price.
I can hear waiter and waitress talking and laughing in Chinese. It very unfortunate for customer like be me, because I cannot understand them.
The price is high in flushing, but ok compare to other place in the city. But nothing stands out in terms of the service or the taste.

This place is a bit off the Main spots but is walk-​able.
As soon as you arrive the Décor is very modern and Americanized (Tiles, High ceilings, Wooden tables and Metal Chairs (Couch if seated by the wall).
Service staff was friendly to us. They handed us 2 pages of list of items that we want to eat.
But during the dining i felt like i was forced to order (meaning they were overselling me the products). Had to ask the waitress to add more soup half way. (EDIT: early when we arrived by 6PM it was less crowded but after 7:30 PM it got busier and staff were less attentive).
Price is a bit steep. But is for the experience. I didn’t order the WINTERMELON (Extra $ 20 plus $ 3 per person). Since it was 2 of us. We just order the Spicy numb soup base to start ($ 3 per person). Soup arrives, Hot oil floating with Red hot chilly but is not that Spicy at all. Flavorful soup that has plenty of herbs in it.
Then we order 3 types of meat (Lamb, Pork Butt and Rib eye meat). The quality of the meats are Freshly Cut and Tasty! Prices were about $ 9 to $ 14 per dish.
(EDIT: Meat arrived freshly cut, but I don’t think it was worth for about 10 slices of meat per dish. Even tho it taste good, but I feel like the cost is a tad High).
Side orders are A MUST! Veggies, Tofu, Fish ball, Mushrooms (Ordered 5 sides were about $ 3 to $ 4 each). They were pretty good (EDIT: But not worth to pay $ 4 for 5 pcs of a Small Amount of VEGGIES).
There were also offering a grilled squid dish if you check in on Unilocal,IG or FB. But i didn’t enjoyed it because it was A BIT TOO SALTY FOR ME. (Edit: The dish is made to order and usually you’ll be able to see one of the Chefs cooking in the center stage. I just wish they put a little bit of sauce instead of just splashing it and cook it).
For 2 people we paid about $ 70 total. (Not including drinks, drank only water)
Did we stuffed ourselves? YES.
Was it good? YES (Edit: but not for the price)
Would you go back again? (Maybe with a bigger group to order more).
Compare to other Hot Pot places what would I say? (Clean, Spacious, Friendly and good quality food compare to those unlimited ones).
(Edit) I personally I am spoiled by the Flushing cheap eats, but this places makes it a upscale «A-​LA-​CARTE» dining experience. Each dish cost $$ and it adds up. Spicy broth was not super numb enough for me but good for Americans (you can request for a HOTTER level I guess).

My first time visit and very satisfy with the food. I love the ambience and design of the restaurant. I didn’t order the melon soup base because my friend said it was just plain soup and it was $ 20 plus $ 3 per person for the melon. I was also looking for something spicy. They provided us with premix house dipping sauce which wasn’t bad. The soup base wasn’t bad but typical with other hotpot restaurants. I love the melon drink with a twist of lime and it served me well since it was a non drinking night for me.
I ordered a little of everything. I loved the cuttlefish, squid, shrimp balls, and especially their rib eye. Everything was al carte and very fresh. Free grilled squid with a Unilocal check in.
The only reason this restaurant didn’t get a five star review was because their waitress ran after me for tips. When did America become a country where gratuity is required and your wait staff will chase you down for tips? However, I did put the meal on my cc and I thought a way to help the wait staff by leaving 20% of gratuity in CASH. One of the other wait staff took the bill and cash and one of the co worker ran after me for tips which I thought was disgusting and rude. I should have asked for my money back for such disrespect. She should have check with her co workers before chasing down a customer. Only Chinese place does something so embarrassing with no self respect.
Conversation with the Waitress:
Waitress– WAIT WAIT…
Me– Turned around I thought I forgot something at first…
Waitress– You forgot to leave me a tip? Showing me the CC receipt
Me– No, I didn’t put anything down because I left you cash and the other guy took it.
Waitress– Really… who was it? (she thought I was lying)
Me– The guy with the hat and tattoo and you should check with him
Waitress– In disbelief… she walks away

I wish I can give this restaurant negative grade if I cloud. Today is my first time coming here and it is LAST time, because it was a HORRIBLE dining experience here. I wont recommend this place to any of my friend but tell them do not come to this place otherwise you will definitely regret!!!
First of all, servers’ attitude are extremely rude .We’ve been seated at a corner when we came in, but at that time lots of tables were empty!
Since this is our first time coming so me and my friend have no idea how to make a order, and nobody come to us to give a introduction of how to do it. So my friend just put three for each item she wants, because she thought it’s going to be very little for one order. Agent we done with ordering, one server took our order without confirmed with us or noticed us how a big is one order and if we order too much cause of it’s only for us two! So when the server brought out so many the dishes on table, we realized we did order too much cause each one comes in a large portion, so we asked them right away is we could get some of the food returned since we didn’t touch them and it just came out, we also apologized for the inconvenience. One server told us yes, but there is another server came over and told us very rudely that we can not return the extra untouched dishes. He continued explained that the eggs are all from cans so can’t be returned (Ridiculous! Have you ever heard the whole egg come from a CAN??? Or who can tell me you can eat 3 dish eggs =10 Pcs Eggs on 1 dish?) I couldn’t stand his rudeness and unreasonable excuse so I request to talk to manger or boss, he responded that they were all absent today.
I was so mad at the time cause of his rude attitude not just because he refused to return the extra food. And the worst is since this happened he never come to our table to check us. NON PROFESSIONAL AT ALL!
At that time I really want to immediately leave, I don’t want to stay anymore!
But I don’t want my friend embarrassed, So I still adhere to eat the hot pot.
It’s not finish yet!
Second we found the lettuce had a small DRAIN FLY on it!!! We couldn’t believe what we saw, and it suddenly made us all too sick to continue to eat !
Finally, to be honest I have to say this restaurant doesn’t taste good at all and some food are not eatable! And the service are horrible!
You consume the amount of money and you get service, has serious deviation!
I had a ‘memorable’ dinner today!
But I still left a 15% tip, because i don’t want other severs lose tips!
Not recommended!
Will not come back again!！
The Flushing have so many places more better better to hotpot than Niu pot!

Came here on a Saturday afternoon at 1PM for lunch, and there was no wait for a table for three. Upon ordering, I recommend choosing the broth base that comes in either 1) A winter melon or 2) Water melon just because it’s so much more fun cooking your food inside a melon!
The restaurant is not all you can eat, and the quality of the food is decent. What one of the previous review mentioned is true, majority of the staff here are Mandarin-​speakers that does not speak a lot of English. If you are not a native Mandarin speaker, and make a request in English the waiter would grab another waiter that does speak English, which can cause a delay in service. The waiters are not rude and our food came in a decent pace.
We ordered both raw food for hot pot and grilled food hrough the checklist they provided, and I must say, the beef selection is fairly small. The plate of beer we ordered were in small portion, but it was on top of a huge bed of lettuce to make it look more than it is. One unique thing Niu offers aside from the melon pot is that they hand craft all their fish balls, and they have this thing called seaweed rice cake which taste like daikon with pudding texture. I recommend trying it, I have not saw that anywhere else in NY.
One thing I highly recommend ordering (MUST TRY!) is their grilled section on the second page on top of drinks. I understand you’re inside a hot pot place, but Niu have a bbq grill in the back that can serve their patron as appetizers. Try the beef rib slices with their special sauces, the beef rib slices is made medium rare like steak and the sauces pairs very well together. Definitely made my tummy a happy place to be.
If you check in on Unilocal,you’re also provided a free order of grill BBQ squid. Hooray! The grill squid wasn’t anything special, but it was well season. It did took a while for our table to received it. It is one grill squid per table, despite various check ins. Our bill came out to be $ 40 a person, and we were all very full. The ambience inside the restaurant is very modern with wooden bench tables with a hot pot stove in the middle of each table. The walls are white tiles, and the music being played were jazzy Christmas tunes. Niu is definitely what I consider a more high end hot pot restaurant, but for the service and the ambience you’re provided I left as a happy diner and will definitely come back.

SUCH A PITY. This place has so much potential. Great food/​drinks and place itself, but such slow servers who do not speak a lick of English. Yes, they give you the menu where you can check off what you want, but how slow can it be putting the orders in the POS and delivering the UNCOOKED food to our table? Mind you, the place is a ghost town. There were probably around 3 tables including ours. It took about 30 minutes for our stuff to come out, and it wasn’t even all at once. It was one… by one… by one. Maybe the service has gotten better after my visit here. I would definitely like to give it a go once more, but I’m going to wait my visit out a bit longer and wait for other people to try it.

Delicious, fresh, fun and an immaculate place! Service was attentive. Beef very good quality. A bit pricey but it’s worth it! You get what you pay for.
The water melon and winter melon hot pot were super fun and unique!
Yep, it was my first time at Niu.

Omg!!! Don’t know where should I start?! My hubby and I are total foodies so when we found out that there’s this new hotpot place in Flushing, we just had to try it out! We went in with four other friends and got so much food!!! I really like the idea of the 冬瓜盅 hotpot with the 走地雞, I had never even heard of doing hotpot with neither things and it was awesome, the favors were so rich and yummy — the dishes made my tummy happy!!! They also have 西瓜盅 hotpot, when we first saw it we were like «what?!» But we saw a few tables getting it and they seem to be really enjoying them so we will try that out next time we go. Also when you order the 西瓜盅 hotpot it comes with watermelon juices!!!
The décor is very chic and modern, also very clean (very important to me since I’m a clean freak)! The foods are all very fresh, love their freshly made shrimp balls, beef balls and the USDA prime beef!!!
Even though this restaurant is still very new, it was jam packed when we went last night, this is the new happening hotpot place in Flushing!
Oh, I also like the fact that you feel so roomy and comfy in there having hotpot and their ventilation system is really good with high ceiling so you don’t leave smelling like hotpot!!!
I always try to end my meals with something sweet, they have this 雙皮奶, OMG!!! Must try — so darn good!!! I am obsessed and I know I will be craving it, just so delish!!! Yum Yum!!!
We travel and eat everywhere and I always read tons of reviews but I never really do them, hubby does, I am just too lazy… I’m writing them a review because I can’t believe all the negative reviews here, gotta give them a shout-​out, especially since I fell in love with their 雙皮奶…

The beef here is top quality Prime beef and is super good, this isn’t an average hot pot with run of the mill ingredients. I also don’t see why everybody complained about the sauces when they bring a sauce station to your table, there’s no need for self-​service.
It’s in a great location and within a 5-​minute walk to the Main street train station, you also can’t go wrong if you get the winter melon hot pot. I noticed almost every table had them and there’s a reason, the broth is unique and adds flavor to the meal. I’ll probably be back during the cold months.
Also I don’t know why people complained about prices, my group spent about 50.00 each, including tip, and we wobbled home with happy full stomachs after what seemed like twenty plates of ingredients.

It appears that management has been reading the horrid Unilocal reviews. Service was definitely not an issue for us on this Sunday evening at 6 p.m.
Food: we ordered many items, but the things that really impressed us were the handmade fish balls and handmade beef balls. The fatty beef was okay, it was just displayed in a way that made the plate appear to have more beef than it actually did. Actually, all of the items were displayed to «look pretty» with little substance.
Service: staff here is actually quite responsive (perhaps due to prior terrible Unilocal reviews).
Décor: the induction system is pretty smart — you’ll have to try to burn yourself now. I like how tables are placed in a sparse manner — it’s refreshing for Flushing. The ventilation system could use a little work, though.

Tried this New hot pot place which is quite different from all the rest. Not a very big place but It’s special is a winter melon hotpot which they put in a whole chicken cut up which makes the soup hearty. Taste like homemade soup. Definitely going again. One girl named Nicole did wonderful job in making us feel comfortable as we waited Bcuz at first she told us it’s about ½hr wait but turned out to be an hr.
Food was good and satisfying. They have this chief/​chef cooked food specials steak was was good. Oysters with the xo sauce was super tasty.