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Opened in 2017 with 50 ingredients to choose from for a build-your-own meal, 108 Food Dried Hot Pot—named after its location on the corner of West 108th Street and Broadway (2794 Broadway)—has officially closed.
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ILTUWS received a tip from a reader who saw the space being cleaned out on Friday. A crew member told our tipster the business had been struggling financially and wasn’t able to get any help to keep the location going.
108 Food Dried Hot Pot, which also has a sister restaurant in Brooklyn that’s been operating for more than a decade, was known for its authentic Taiwanese bubble tea (Teatime) and cuisine honoring cultural delicacies from the province of Sichuan and the city of Chongqing.
“With a variety of chili peppers—at least 20 different kinds—and using Chinese medicinal herbs promoting longevity and good health,” their website explains. “The tradition of the dry hot pot is all about bringing family and friends together to experience the joy of cooking and the love of sharing food with each other.”
With 4.2 stars on Google and 3.5 on Yelp, 108 Food Dried Hot Pot also received four stars from food website Eater in 2017, which wrote, “It offers the city’s latest Chinese food fad: the dry hot pot, a craze renowned for its spiciness that began in Beijing and first appeared here in Flushing food courts.”
What makes dry hot pot special is that, unlike typical hot pot—which involves cooking ingredients at the table by swirling them in a piping hot, bubbling broth—dry hot pot uses similar raw ingredients, but they’re prepared in the kitchen instead of at the table. This makes the end result more like a stir-fry, not a soup, though it’s not dry. Your order will have a nice sheen, glistening with oil.
We’ll miss this one. Our tipster said, “Another one bites the dust.”
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Although I know it was the landlord’s fault, I could never bring myself to eat here after it took over the former Cannon’s/O’Connell’s/Tara Hill space. Someone please open a pub here again!
It was just way too expensive…