Is there anything more fun on a table than a burner? Of course not. The merriest, most interactive restaurants on earth serve hot pot or Korean barbecue. There’s no leaving one of those places with a frown, unless you’ve overindulged. And the same can be said for conveyor-belt sushi.
I never imagined a place where I could have all three meals in one sitting. That’s the beauty of Running Dish, a new hot pot, KBBQ, and sushi restaurant in Sterling’s Community Plaza.
The restaurant is spacious, with room for ample seating and buffet tables filled with practically anything diners can dream up to enhance their pan-Asian experience. Guests can pick two of the three cuisines or get them all — of course, I shelled out $37.99 to have all three.
My dining partner chose the Szechuan spicy hot pot broth, so I went with the other spicy option, a take on Thai tom yum. Both were searingly hot in temperature and pleasantly heavy on spice, but I was especially taken with the lemongrass-dotted, tangy tom yum.
Thinly shaved hot pot meats await in freezers, including slices of beef rib-eye that melted in my pot. I chose to fill up on my favorite ingredients: tofu skin, enoki mushrooms, and various green leafy vegetables. But there’s lots more to love, including crab (at dinnertime only), crawfish, and a laudable collection of meat and tofu balls, including a marshmallowy fish cake surrounding juicy pork.
Barbecue meats range from more than one variety of cephalopods and fifth-quarter meats to dinnertime rib-eye steaks. My table’s favorite protein was labeled “Stone Age steak,” medium-thin beef in a soy-and-chile marinade that turned out to be sweeter than it was spicy. I much preferred it to the bulgogi.
I won’t be bestowing prizes on the sushi, which is ordered from a tablet and whizzes from the kitchen on a tableside belt. But ultimately, a restaurant like Running Dish is more about the experience than the quality of the food. That experience made for a great night that I would absolutely repeat.
Running Dish: 47100 Community Plaza, Ste. 138, Sterling
Feature image by Alice Levitt
