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| - After hunting for a Chinese hot pot place in Charlotte for almost a year, me and my boyfriend finally found out about Dynasty and decided to give it a shot. While not disappointed, I am pretty unimpressed.
Firstly, our hot pot was not quite what I expected after being a regular hot pot eater at Spices in San Francisco and downtown Oakland. I can't think of what was wrong, it just didn't quite hit the spot. Maybe California spoiled me, so I'll focus on my review without comparing it to China Town.
While authentic, the Ma-La spicy broth was low on salt. Also, the hot pot tasted better after combining it with the dipping sauce they provided on the side. At one point, we just poured all the dipping sauce into the broth and it neared perfection. We ordered the cellophane noodles, napa, fried tofu, sliced beef, corn, and shrimp wonton. I thought the corn was going to be baby corn, but it turned out to be pieces of sweet corn. My bad, since I should have asked. The tofu and wontons were perfect though.
I have serious concerns about how slow the service was. It took almost 35 minutes for our hot pot to get to our table. The couple sitting at the table next to ours ordered their food just before we did and their food hadn't arrived for a long time after ours, and them staring at our food made me feel a little guilty and sorry for them. We ordered the tofu as an afterthought after our hotpot arrived and it took another 20 minutes for the tofu to arrive. Halfway through the meal we ordered more noodles and it took 23 minutes for the noodles to get to our table (yep, I timed it!), and by then we had eaten up everything else and were done with our meal. We arrived at the restaurant just after 6, got seated immediately since they weren't very busy, and yet thanks to the slow service, by the time we finished our meal and left, it was almost 8pm, which ruined our plan of grocery shopping at a nearby International market that closes at 8 (which is why I noted all the service times). I would have given them leeway if they were crowded or if we had ordered something special, but when we sat, only 7 tables were occupied and we ordered hotpot, which is mostly raw stuff that we cook ourselves and requires little prep time!
I'm willing to consider that we went here sometime between Christmas and NYE so they might be understaffed, but other reviewers have complained about slow service too. I will still give them another shot, mainly because they are the only choice for hotpot in Charlotte (if anyone knows of any other, let me know) and if the service is any better, I'll update my review.
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