The most useful thing to know about Vandal, a bacchanalian Bowery temple to viral foods, faux street art, and a basic cocaine lifestyle, is that it’s adjacent to another let’s-have-a-long-night-out spot that’s actually worth visiting. Zhen Wei Fang, backed by Wei Chen and the Congee Village team, pairs its pristine hot pot fare with an absolutely wild environment.
A robot host greets guests in Mandarin. Mixed martial arts matches play on four televisions. Michael Jackson pumps through the sound system. Multitiered meat trays rise 3 feet above every table, flaunting vertical croppings of raw lamb, beef, and tofu skin. Diners use chopsticks to plunge red ribbons of New Zealand lamb ($15) into white bone broth, turning the flesh brown, soft, and succulent. You slurp the meat almost as easily as you would a noodle.
Want to combine hot pot with a few hours of sake-fueled karaoke? There are private rooms for that. There are also semi-private rooms that double as immersive multimedia carousels. High-tech projectors broadcast computer-generated nature footage on three separate walls, giving patrons the sensation that they’re dining inside an IMAX universe inspired by 1990s screensavers. Leaves fall over ersatz mountains; palm trees sway in the digital wind. As a waiter sears expensive wagyu over a hot stone, snow falls upward toward outer space. The title song to Free Willy plays on the speakers, and you let silken A5 wagyu, slathered in pork fat and Sichuan chiles, dissolve on your tongue for $80.
What a New York story: In the literal shadow of one of the city’s most irrationally packed culinary establishments is a hangout that’s killing it — a little more quietly, and with a lot more heart. And in case anyone’s worried Zhen Wei’s visual antics might compete with the gustatory bliss, there’s another place called Tang down the block hawking high-end hot pot fare in a more sedate environment.
Once upon a time, a hot pot spot in Vegas was the country’s most expensive restaurant. The chef was Masa Takayama (yes, that guy), who served a $500 omakase of shabu shabu, the Japanese adaptation of the Chinese tradition. It didn’t last, but New York has a solid representation of that elevated style at Macoron, where a celebrated hot pot tasting runs $128.
Chinese hot pots, by contrast, a pan-regional tradition with roots in the Han Dynasty, haven’t reached those levels of extravagance in the Big Apple. High-end Sinosphere fare isn’t nonexistent — one thinks of the $150-plus fish-maw platters at Oriental Garden or the black-truffle luxuries of Hakkasan — but such venues haven’t yet reached the critical mass of expensive French, Japanese, or Italian venues.
Local hot pot cuisine in particular remains an affordable affair, ranking with Korean barbecue and American smokehouses as some of the most accessible and vital Big Apple restaurants for groups. Some, like Hou Yi in the East Village, draw in budget diners with $31 all-you-can-eat affairs and self-serve ice cream bars. Others, like Mister Hotpot in Sunset Park, aim for a late-night crowd, hawking reasonably priced meats until 2 a.m.
What sets apart Zhen Wei, and the Sichuan-leaning Tang down the block (more on that below), is that they’re modernizing the Manhattan hot pot experience a bit more pronouncedly than their excellent peers. It’s all in a similar vein to the efforts of other ambitious operators from the mainland and Taiwan, which is to say they’re updating and repackaging their ancestral fare for a booming Chinese student population — and anyone else willing to spend a few extra dollars at more fashionably contemporary restaurants.
That roughly means patrons at both venues will encounter, to a greater or lesser extent, posh interior designs, performative sourcing, bespoke cocktail lists (ugh), craft beers, orange wines, exorbitant wagyu and abalone, and, at Tang, a lighting scheme so Instagrammable that the Museum of Modern Art would be jealous.
If any of these touches make it feel like a beloved tradition is adopting the moneyed signifiers of obnoxiously hip restaurants, rest assured: Both venues manage to keep their souls — counterbalancing stereotypical indulgences with classically Chinese organ meats and powerfully fragrant broths.
The communal experience is a central element of a hot pot meal; one imagines a hungry crew huddled over a single steaming pot. Dinner at Zhen Wei, however, is more uncommonly individualistic.
Each patron selects their own $6 broth, which simmers on a personal induction burner. It’s tempting to assert there’s something inherently ridiculous about such a setup; one wouldn’t expect a single order of fondue to come in three separate crocks for sanitary reasons. But I’d retort that the courtesy is entirely less absurd than so many other elements of upscale dining, from the use of four plates underneath a single starter at Per Se to the use of eight different wine glasses during a tasting-menu beverage pairing.
Or, more practically: It’s fun to try out different broths at Zhen Wei by dipping into your neighbors’ pots. It’s the soup version of share plates.
Most options work well with everything, though the spicy Sichuan gives a nice kick to neutral items like soft tofu, gorgeously gummy mung bean noodles (take them out when they turn translucent), slippery tendon (as weightless as shaved bonito), and feathery enoki mushrooms. The intensely porky tang of bone broth, in turn, imparts a savory, swine-y aroma to flaky red snapper and firm sea scallops. And sweet and sour tomato, packed with electric acidity and umami, helps tame the gentle funk of lamb or tripe.
Every broth boasts a voluptuous roundness that makes them sippable on their own; they’re even better poured into small wooden bowls for ramen-noodle dipping. And although the patrons do much of the cooking here, those stellar soups, intensely funky XO ramekins, and all the prepared items are the fine work of chef Wei Huang, a Guangdong native and pan-regional virtuoso who helmed Zhen Wei’s first location in Miami.
The chef grills cumin lamb skewers in the style of a studied Xinjiang hangout, offsetting the juicy meat with marshmallow-like fat. He sends out chilled bang bang chicken that balances the poultry’s clean punch with the searing heat of chiles. He whips up shellfish boils on par with Le Sia, coating barely cooked-through lobster claws with a mess of salted chiles.
And he also oversees a kitchen whose cooks ensure everything is sliced thinly enough to cook quickly. This part is simple enough: Tongue tastes like tongue; Spam tastes like Spam. But for what it’s worth, the shaved ribeye is so well marbled it seems to disintegrate with the same elegance as Japanese wagyu, and packs no less flavor at just $12. I recommend enjoying all these cuts in the back room, decorated with four 82-inch televisions, each of which shows Jackie Chan singing on a variety show, on mute.
For those who insist on wagyu, Yu Liu’s Tang Hotpot, an offshoot of the East Village noodle shack, provides it at a marginally lower cost. It’s sold here for $65, or as a smaller portion as part of an $80 combination platter with pleasantly chewy abalone, flaky snapper, heady goat leg, beef short ribs (cut a bit too thickly), paper-thin pork, and shrimp (impressively flavored when simmered in seafood soup).
The only catch is that the broths, served communally in copper pops from Yunnan, are nominally more expensive than those at Zhen Wei, though they can serve up to four, making them cheaper for larger parties. Spicy Sichuan starts at $18 for the table, while a more “curated” version of the same soup — with a separate pot of pork bone broth — runs $23.
Spoiler: Both taste about the same, delivering no more complexity or flavor than than the versions at Zhen Wei (and arguably a touch less). That brings up the central issue with Tang. Notwithstanding the fact that New Yorkers unquestionably underpay for Chinese fare in almost every form, the quality of Tang’s food and service don’t necessarily match the higher prices it commands. Its beef and lamb selections don’t sing with the clear, powerful flavors one expects. And really, there’s no need for condiments like $4 truffle-oil sesame paste.
But what Tang can flaunt is a smart beverage program, energetic bar crowds, and shiny digs — evocative of a mid-aughts power spot — by New Practice Studio, the same firm that did stylish restaurants Hao Noodle and Hunan Slurp.
A host escorts Canada Goose jacket-wearing patrons to room booths. Louis Poulsen Radiohus pendant lights, set at uneven heights, do their best impression of summertime fireflies, casting dim luminescence on Italian soapstone tables and chartreuse banquettes. A balcony overlooks the dining room — evoking Geoffrey Zakarian’s erstwhile Town — while most tables get a clear view of artist Xu Han’s piece de resistance, a painting of Tang-court women incongruously eating modern hot pot alongside an Oktoberfest-sized lager.
Staffers ferry over sparkling orange wines in thin-lipped glasses, or sake cocktails in coconut shells, often 10 minutes after you order them. And smart-tablet ordering systems mean that food sometimes starts to arrive at your table before a waiter finishes taking your order.
Aside from hot pot, only a few cold appetizers are on tap for now: run-of-the-mill mung bean noodles with chile sauce or a somewhat limp cold chicken in sesame paste. Chef Baiguang Han, late of Szechuan Mountain House, doesn’t get to show off his culinary chops as much as his counterpart at Zhen Wei. One exception is a nice platter of braised and chilled meats, a collection that shows off beef shank, duck wings, pig’s ear, and gizzards in all their chewy, snappy, gelatinous glory. That aside, stick to the raw meats and seafood, the nice wines, and the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory scoops of lychee ice cream.
Successive waves of gentrification have been pummeling the Bowery since at least the early 2000s, from the Avalon luxury developments and its $3,000-per-month studios to the sprawling clubstaurant that is Vandal, a behemoth that earns its riches by commercializing the street’s artistically populist ethos of yore.
Hot pot spots hawking expensive Japanese beef certainly won’t solve any larger urban problems, alas. But inasmuch as the city continues to change, it’s good to see both older and younger Chinese operators get in on the action, while still keeping things more accessible than their Western counterparts.