Udu Cafe
“You get a heaping platter of delicious food to cook in individual pots that you fill from a wide selection of soup bases.”
“The difference here from other hot pot places is the variety of soups you can choose!”
“The sauce station is excellent as everything is clearly labeled and well-maintained.”
Udu Cafe
Takes Reservations: Yes
Take-out: Yes
Accepts Credit Cards: Yes
Wheelchair Accessible: Yes
Good for Kids: Yes
Good for Groups: Yes
Has TV: Yes
Waiter Service: Yes
Price range.
$$ Price range $11-30
8 reviews
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Second floor, and they have a new option for hotpot buffet – a $15/person deal where they give you all the veggies, tofu and soda you want to eat, with some fishballs + random side meats (tripe, etc.).
With meat extra, this is still worth it if you love your veggies and tofu.
Sometimes you get those hotpot cravings when it's cold out. Sometimes you go to an AYCE location to stuff your face. Sometimes you wait 40 mins for your food to come but still get rushed out at that 2 hour mark, when you and your friends are just about finishing up anyway but your conversation is rudely interrupted by the staff. With the check. and some rush comments in Chinese. While the table behind you is completely empty for new people. Sometimes.
Overall, I still like this place for the atmosphere, cleanliness and overall quality of food. The service might not be amazing, and they might serve you some resemblance of bland carbonated water when you ask for diet coke, and diet coke when you ask for coke (sprite is sprite though), but I can't argue with the options of food as a hot pot establishment.
AYCE brings you to about $29.99 on the weekends not including gratuity. Beer (it seems like just Coors though) and soda is included. It feels like the possbilities are endless here though (is it just me?) You just mark what you want on the paper and they will (try their best) to get you everything. Sometimes, they leave out a thing here or there but hardly is that ever an issue because you can keep adding to your order later on.
Choose your soup – I like the herbal and the seaweed base. Meats, vegetables, tofu, fishballs, mushrooms they have so many options within these options – I love it. My go to's – beef, lamb, fish filet, golden fishballs (my fav, but all the other ones are worth trying too), fish tofu, silk tofu, gold stem mushrooms (or go mushroom combo), watercress, bok choy, pumpkin, winter melon and dumplings. Throw food in the pot, sit back, relax and eat.
The only thing I would say that should be added in terms of food/sauce – is peanut sauce. Most establishments have this as a sauce option, but this one doesn't (which surprised me), but that's about it!
~chow!
I would definitely return here for their hotpot ayce and drink (beer or soda) deal for $29. They have everything you'd expect for all your hotpot cravings listed on a sheet of paper for you to check off. The home-made dumplings with shrimp was a favorite. Our party of 8 got a nice table in the back "skylight" area on the second floor with 4 hotpots and a large computer screen for us to play our own music. Plenty of space and much more modern and comfortable than some other hotpot places you'd find. We opted for two different broths–a super spicy one with red hot chili peppers in tow that had some of us sweating and gulping down the aycd beer (which was unfortunately quite watered down) and the goji berry and duck broth. I highly recommend the latter for those who don't like spicy. They have an impressive condiments and sauce section where you can mix and match whatever you'd like. I wouldn't have known this existed if our friends didn't point it out. At times, we needed our hotpots refilled with water and it took awhile to get the waiter's attention. But regardless, the food options for hotpot were fresh and plentiful and it's a fun dining experience.
An all you can eat hot pot place that services fairly spicy soup bases. Although they don't advertise that the spicier soups will cost 2 dollars extra. I do like that they give one pot for every two individuals, which can be a full pot of one soup or split half pots of two different choices.
They have a large selection of food items but their English translations were different than their actual names so there was some minor confusion in the beginning. Their vegetables and mushrooms were standard, the meats weren't bad since they didn't look like they just thawed moments before, and the noodles were ok but they weren't flavorful/absorbent of the soup base as other places. I also didn't like their fish slices. The fish tasted bland and sliced thinner than it should because the meat would fall apart once it's cooked. Not even the spicy soup base was able to flush out the bland thawed fish flavor. The mussels were pretty big but you only get two per order. It didn't taste bad but it definitely wasn't fresh. We had a drink included for the meal and if you order soda expect for it to be watered down.
Big tables and many of them can seat large groups. The staff was friendly and wasn't difficult to me or my friends. The food did take long to arrive after you fill out the form. Some items never came out, and after ordering it two times, we gave up and presumed they were out of stock. Would've been nice to be told if they were out or not.
Not a terrible place but too many factors that makes it a place I'd rather shy away from. If you're looking for an all you can eat, there's bound to be better places elsewhere in Flushing.
Came here on a Groupon with a bunch of friends. First off, it did not start off pleasant because the lady scanned in our Groupon and then claim that it was not there. After awhile she asked for help from another waiter and eventually it was found. After all that misunderstanding, we were allowed to pick our food from the piece of paper.
The food just took a little longer than we expected to come out even though it was just raw stuff for the hot pot. The food was not overly impressive. The fatty beef and lamb was mediocre. The only thing I did like was that they had a decent selection of fish balls, lobster balls, beef balls, etc.
Probably will not be back at this place unless they are offering a deal. Think they are a little pricey for full price.
My sister purchased a Groupon for four a while back so we, alongside my two cousins, finally decided to come to Udu to use it. My sister came here twice before and my cousin, once. Both had only stated good things about this place for hotpot so I had high expectations.
We came around 4PM with no wait time. Once we entered, we were guided upstairs to a selection of empty tables. Each table came with a complimentary computer screen. I played with it a little bit and it was definitely not the easiest to use. Plus, the Internet was very slow so we hardly even used it. We focused more of our attention on ordering our food quickly, eating and talking to each other instead.
We ordered a variety of your basic hotpot food: meat, fishballs, seafood, mushrooms, noodles, etc. All were very fresh and good. It was also fun cooking our food in 4 different soup bases. We got chicken, mushroom, spicy and seaweed; all were tasty in their own ways.
Because the restaurant wasn't packed, our food was served to us quickly. The waiters also worked at a fast pace. We got unlimited refills for our sodas and there was always someone who came to add more water to our pots without asking. Thumbs up for their service. However, side thumb for the waitress who challenged our orders because she thought we ordered too much food and couldn't finish it. Turns out we finished everything aka 5 rounds of orders.
With a Groupon, I think this place was totally worth it. Without the Groupon, it can still be a good option if they consistently serve good quality food and provide fast service. Great experience overall. Glad I was able to try a new decent hot pot place in Flushing.
WHAT THE HECK was in my soup.. omg. when i got my typical seaweed pot, there was like a film of.. gooey-ness that just did NOT look..right,…. so asked for a new pot but I was too traumatized to eat out of my soup pot… Usually the "grade pending" doesn't scare me but now I'm going to be more cautious coming here..if i want grub shabu, i'll probably come with a risk of getting something funny in my tummy.
The idea of Shabu Shabu aka Hotpot is simple, you are given raw food which you cook in a soup base which then you dip in this sauce and enjoy.
Udu cafe is an AYCE or a la carte shabu shabu place located on Prince Street, on the peak of the hill if that helps.
Came here on a Friday night, didn't have to wait too long so that's good news!
The place is clean and filled with people- also good news!!
Wait staff wasn't very attentive- bad news!!! so after 10-15 minutes of sitting around, we finally got hold of one wait staff and tell him what we want. I am not sure how well he understand us in English but luckily we got someone who can speak Mandarin so we are all set.
We came with a good amount of people so we did the AYCE and we definitely tried everything on the menu and here are some we really liked:
Beef – a given a ShabuShabu
Pork- actually quite good and high quality
Veggie- I'm not a big veggie person but if you cook them till they are mushy, i'm all for it
Dumplings- all sort and kinds
BALLS- yes i'm talking about the fish balls, beef balls, cuttlefish balls
Carbs- any carbs that's dumped into flavored soup base are good carbs, Udon is my favorite!
Seafood- I'm not a big seafood person at Shabu but I do enjoy the fish filet!
Now before you eat, you gotta make sure you get yourself some dipping sauce, for the beginners, go for some Shacha Sauce, Soy Sauce, dash of sesame oil maybe some scallion and garlic and you should be good. For the adventurous, add some peanut sauce and smash a raw egg into the above mixture.
Price: pricy in terms of eating in Flushing, hard to determine since if you have a bunch of heavy eaters, you can make this well worth it. our meal came out to be around 40 per person with tips and tax.
Udu is definitely cool to go with friends, just make sure you are hungry before you go or else it might not be worth it to do AYCE.