PJ Hot Pot offers tips for cooking and enjoying a meal prepared by patrons tableside
Choosing your own ingredients and building your own meal are ideas as old as the church potluck — or probably longer. In a cave somewhere on this planet, there surely must be petroglyphs of ancient people pleading to their gods for an extra scoop of guacamole.
But from lists of delicious proteins and creative salsas at Condado, I've ticked off boxes to create some pretty regrettable tacos. My partner has come to the conclusion he's incapable of putting together a good pasta bowl on his own at Piada.
We felt similarly discombobulated the first time we looked over the menu at PJ Hot Pot ∣ Korean BBQ & Bar, which opened in February on the Northwest Side. We're both capable enough in the kitchen — I won't say who's (me) a better cook (me) — but with a combined 109 ingredient choices, two do-it-yourself cooking methods and an array of utensils, it seemed there was a lot of room for error.
Let's backtrack really quick to go over what PJ Hot Pot & Korean BBQ is all about. The restaurant combines two popular dining traditions: Chinese hot pot and Korean barbecue. Hot pot is a communal experience of cooking meats, vegetables and noodles in tabletop pots filled with flavorful broths. Korean barbecue shares that communal dining aspect, but is centered around cooking meats on electric grills that are built into tables.
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Both are designed for leisurely eating and lengthy visits among family and friends. Only one other Columbus restaurant combines both. KPot, a rapidly expanding national chain, opened its first central Ohio location on Bethel Road in February 2023 and has another in the works at the Polaris Towne Center.
It's not the food that seemed intimidating to us in mid-March as first-time hotpotters and Korean barbecuers. Among those 109 choices are plenty of familiar offerings, such as sliced pork belly, rib-eye, brisket and chicken; shrimp, calamari, salmon and octopus; zucchini, onion, eggplant, sweet potato and pumpkin. (There's also beef tongue, cattle tripe and beef aorta for those who enjoy those offerings.)
It might have been online reviews that got into our heads, the ones where people recommended keeping track of what tongs you use to touch raw and cooked meat. It might have been the close proximity of glowing hot burners and sizzling grill plates.
It might have been the pressure to get our money's worth in an all-you-can-eat situation, though really, it wasn't that at all. Lunch at PJ Hot Pot is $20 for hot pot or barbecue, or $25 for both. Dinner is $30 for one or $35 for both.
We had a great meal and enjoyed the experience. PJ Hot Pot is a large and lovely place with low lighting and modern décor. The booths can be a bit tight for Ohio-sized folks like me, but there are also tables and chairs that accommodate parties of two, four, six or eight.
But I had the nagging feeling we just weren't doing something right, so I asked Felix Zhao to have lunch with me last week. The assistant manager of PJ Hot Pot and the two Cajun Boil Seafood & Bar restaurants run by PJ co-owner Joe Lin, said he's not a professional cook, but knows his way around a tabletop grill and a pot of boiling broth.
In his native China, Felix said hot pot is a favorite dining-out option. You could do it at home, he said, but then you have a lot of dishes to wash.
"The fun thing about going out for hot pot is you cook, eat and talk at the same time," he said.
Although hot pot and Korean barbecue are long and leisurely meals — the lunch prices are a great deal, but don't go if you have only an hour — cooking your food isn't piecemeal. I ordered prime brisket, green mussels, lobster balls, bean sprouts, broccoli and shiitake mushrooms to cook in my herb broth. No need to worry about what tongs are reserved for what meat. Felix pushed them all into the pot to cook together.
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It's a smart move, because hot pot is about the food you put into the pot, not the broth it's cooking in. Although many people enjoy the broth, which Felix said gets better and better from the flavors of the ingredients you add to it, the real meal is the beef, seafood and other things you pull out and dip into a selection of sauces.
Which brings us to the big question: How do you know when your food is cooked?
In the broth, Felix said, cook thinly sliced meats for 30 seconds to one minute. Seafood takes one to two minutes, vegetables take two to three minutes and noodles take three to five minutes.
On the grill, after melting a bit of butter to get it ready, cook thinly sliced meats for about a minute per side. Shrimp and squid take about two to three minutes per side, while thicker cuts of meat and vegetables, such as mushrooms and zucchini, take about three to five minutes per side.
On our own, we had grilled a few pieces of chicken at a time and hovered like nervous parents. Felix cooked the beef, pork and shrimp separately, but added the entire plate of each to the grill at once. He used tongs to move meats around until they were golden with a tiny bit of delicious char.
(Sauce-wise, Felix makes his own by combining the secret house sauce, garlic and chili peppers. There are 12 sauces to choose from and recommendations posted for combinations. I recommend shacha sauce, an already-made mix of soybean oil, garlic, shallots, chiles and dried shrimp that I had never tried before, but will soon stock up on at CAM International Market.)
The best lesson Felix offered was to not obsess over what you're combining and how you're cooking your meal at PJ Hot Pot. If you burn something, ask for a new grill top. If you don't like something, order something else, although the restaurant reserves the right to charge people if it feels they're wasting food.
Go with the communal dining flow. It really seems to work at bringing people together.
Joe Lin's co-owner at PJ Hot Pot is Peter Chen, who owns Pier 11 Boiling Seafood, another local chain. It's the first joint venture for the men, whose other businesses compete for customers.
"For the boil seafood restaurants, we are rivals," Lin said. "Actually, he is my top competitor."
"We have known each other for a long time," he continued. "We go out fishing together. Our kids go to the same school."
And now, they've also bonded over hot pot and barbecue.
If you go
Where: PJ Hot Pot ∣ BBQ & Bar, 6100 Sawmill Road, Northwest Side
Hours: Noon to 10 p.m., Mondays through Thursdays, noon to 10:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, noon to 9:30 p.m. Sundays
Contact: 614-389-0567, pjhotpot.com
Instagram: @dispatchdining
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: PJ Hot Pot | Korean BBQ & Bar opens on Northwest Side in Columbus
