Iron Kitchen

Reviews

• Victoria S.

  star star star star star_border 10 June 2026

  The food here is delicious! Went here during the winter season and Hot Pot on a cold day just hits the spot. Wish this place could expand, it's quite small meaning the servers can only serve food to little at a time. Another downside would be not having a bathroom, that's just something that should be a requirement for restaurants (ex. for people to wash their hands before and after a meal.) Also I remembered the waitress including the tip in the price.. even when we didn't establish whether or not we were going to + tip.

• Bonnie C.

  star star star_border star_border star_border 4 June 2026

  I want to like this place so bad, but I don't think I can (yet). I ordered their spicy beef less spicy hot pot option and it was rather bland. To me, it was more sour than anything which is not what I was expecting. It was sour and spicy.... almost like a tom yum I suppose. The meat was not fresh and it felt very one dimensional. On top of that, I had to keep adjusting the dish because it kept moving. Thankfully there were rubber gloves to move the pot, but it was inconvenient.
  
  I hate to give this place only two stars because the staff is amazing and made the experience great, but the food here here was just really subpar.
  
  I am willing to give this place another shot if they somehow improve. For now, I will just stick to hot pot.

• Shirley G.

  star star star_border star_border star_border 4 June 2026

  I would give this place an overall score of 2.5 mostly because of service. Food was a flat 3/5. I was with a group of 6 and was seated immediately. Most of us got spicy beef boiling pot. It has 3 levels of spice. Get the least spicy option if you can't handle an extreme amount of spice and don't get spicy beef at all if you can't tolerate decent amount of spice.
  
  So I got the spicy beef, asked for pork blood to be excluded, and also ordered fresh milk with red bean. I felt like everyone's order at the table was wrong in some form or another. The pork blood was never removed. Our boba drinks were mixed up. Other people's pots were either missing stuff or stuff were never excluded as requested. I honestly don't get how they messed up all that since the waitress input everything into their tablet... on top of that, she only had to take four orders first and two orders later because the other two people of the group came in late.
  
  The waitress was just very inexperienced where it irked my soul and made eating a simple lunch a serious hassle. She asked me if I needed a water refill. I told her I accidentally got my broth into my water... I had a plastic cup of water with an obvious layer of oily,red broth on top.... she looked at it, saw it, and..... STILL poured water into it............................ I'm just going to leave it at that. This was me ... (-_-) *face palm*

• Wu W.

  star star star_border star_border star_border 1 June 2026

  I love the herbal sparerib with chinese yam and unagi rice.  Comparing with the drinks, the drinks are suck. I ordered oreo snow amd strawberry snow. Snow is basically slush,my kids did not like it at all. Strawberry is too sour for kids, oreo snow is basically add oreo to sugar water......I could not taste other favor other than oreo.
  
  Service is good and everything is good. When I asked for checkout (x 2 times), the waitress brought an ipad instead of the receipt. She asked if I want to pay credit card or cash. I chose cash and she told us the total will be $61.xx, I felt weird because I did not think I ordered more than $50. Even though included tax, but still should't more than $60. I asked for a receipt, the waitress said she will give it to us after we pay for it. I was shocked when I heard it. You asked me to pay for it without letting me know/see the receipt, this is ridiculous. I did not want to make trouble, so I gave her $100 bill. She brought the receipt and gave back the changes to me. After then I realized she charged me 15% tips without informing me. I do not mind she charged tips, but at least she should let me know. I was assuming she wanted me to pay double tips.

• Amelia L.

  star star star star_border star_border 27 May 2026

  I went here a few weeks ago because it was on the Boston Eater review and my friends and I thought we'd give it a try since the concept of your own hotpot seemed pretty cool.
  
  Environment:
  The place is located in Allston right next to the Loui Loui restaurant, we walked inside and waited about 10-15 mins for a table. The size of the restaurant is basically the size of a typical Chinese take out restaurant, so the fact that we didn't have to wait too long was surprising as this restaurant was full, and I'm sure it won't die down anytime soon with the cold weather approaching so just be aware if you're in a rush.
  
  Service:
  Service was okay, once she seated us, she gave us a few minutes and took our order. We received waters not too long after. Although I have to say we ordered drinks but they didn't even come until halfway of us finishing our hotpots although she did come around and filled our waters as needed before we received our actual drink orders. We had to wave her down for our check, we wanted to leave tip in cash but was told that everything had to be put in the card, which doesn't really make sense because they accept cash.
  
  Food review:
  I ordered the curry fish ball pot, which contained Napa, pork belly, white and fried fish ball, clams, enoki, quail egg, fish tofu, crab stick, lobster ball and udon. You had the choice to add additional sides for extra costs but honestly I thought there was plenty for one person already. The pots came out on individual burners as part of the presentation but honestly we had them turn them off maybe 5 mins after since it caused the broth to boil and too hot to eat. The concept is cool but I guess not really necessary. The taste of the broth reminded me of Lipton soup base from the prepackaged bag, high in sodium. The portion I would have to say was just right but honestly it didn't wow me. I probably could have made this at home using the Lipton soup based package and thrown in a bunch of frozen seafood and udon noodles and it would have been exactly the same.
  
  Summary:
  Cool to experience but don't think I'd go out of my way to go again
  
  Pros:
  The presentation
  Portion for pricing
  
  Cons:
  Street parking
  Drinks came late
  Low to average service
  Food was mediocre
  Size of restaurant was small