I’m not too picky of a person, especially when it comes to food, but there are still some things that I prefer and don’t prefer. With that being said, I do still like to experience things that I know I don’t like for two main reasons—to make sure that my preferences haven’t changed over time, and to make sure I keep my understanding of my dislikes up-to-date to ensure that I can articulate myself in case I ever need to justify myself in the future.
One type of food I don’t prefer is anything with a large amount of hot liquid. Obviously, this isn’t a severe dislike—I still consume soup, ramen, and tea, among other similar things. However, having too much of it induces an interesting phenomenon for me where it feels like the inside of my body is itchy. There are no other symptoms, i.e., I don’t have difficulty breathing and I don’t get any external inflammation, but it can still be a bit uncomfortable.
Now of course, although I don’t go to hot pot or shabu-shabu restaurants too often, I still want to visit once in a while under the philosophy I just mentioned. So, last night, I had dinner at The X Pot, a Chinese restaurant by the Chubby Group in the Grand Canal Shoppes at The Palazzo in the Venetian Resort on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada.
Normally, The X Pot has a few different menu options, ranging from standard à la carte to some special chef’s and VIP tasting menus. However, in celebration of their five-year anniversary, they currently have a 100-minute all-you-can-eat special offer from mid-June to the end of July 2025, which is what my friend and I got.
My friend ordered the oxtail tomato soup base, while I got the X special spicy. I should’ve know that this was Asian levels of spicy, considering that the menu had Chinese translations for everything. Unfortunately, my brain did not make the connection at the time, so I ended up ordering this soup base that was tolerable, but still too spicy for my preference. I ended up handling this by removing almost all the spicy peppers in the soup, which actually ended up being a substantial pile, and that helped a lot.
While we were waiting for our meat to arrive, we ordered an appetizer feast, a set of four premium items limited to one order per customer per meal. The feast included ribeye nigiri, wagyu tartare, foie gras with caviar, and a wagyu and uni roll.
For our first round of meat, we got Japanese A5 wagyu ribeye, ribeye cap, chuck roll, and shoulder clod. We also got some Australian stone axe chuck roll and domestic thin-cut wagyu tongue.
I forgot to take a photograph of our first round of meats; instead, here is a photograph of the second round, which is a plate of only tongue, my favorite cut of beef.
To go along with our soup and meat, we also got a bowl of assorted vegetables.
There were two all-you-can-eat options—one with unlimited wagyu, and one with both unlimited seafood and wagyu. My friend and I both like seafood, so we went with the option that also included unlimited seafood. I’m glad we went with this, because this also included Boston lobster, spotted prawn, oyster, and scallop. In addition to the set pictured, we also got several more orders of oyster and scallop.
My friend also wanted to try a bunch of different signature and specialty dishes from the menu. These are truffle fries, which came with a special house ketchup mixture that I liked.
This is a wagyu tart. I wasn’t the biggest fan of this—the meat inside was minced and didn’t have as clean and straightforward of a wagyu flavor as the other items.
We also each got one swan cake. The presentation on this dish was very nice.
We ordered some wagyu salad as well, but found out that it was basically just a regular salad with some tomatoes and pineapple, and the wagyu element of it appeared to just be crumbled dried wagyu sprinkled on top.
This is crispy pork. I thought it was fine, but it tasted pretty underwhelming compared to how good all the other meat dishes were.
Our order of black pepper A5 wagyu was cooked tableside. This was my favorite item of the dinner—it came with a nice little preparation performance, and the meat was incredibly thick and tender.
This is the wagyu carpaccio.
We also got one wagyu foie gras slider to share. By this point, I was already pretty full, so I only had a few bites of it. I’m sure this was an amazing burger and I would’ve liked it a lot in any other context, but during the dinner, I just preferred the plain wagyu that I could cook in my hot pot soup base.
My friend also got some healthier sides with less saturated fat so that we weren’t clogging our arteries too much with all the wagyu—she ordered some quail eggs, bean curd, and wintermelon.
For dessert, we received the chef’s choice special dessert, which was matcha macarons today.
This is what the dining area around us looked like.
| Unlimited live seafood and wagyu menu ×2 | $ 318.00 |
| Chubby Club Plus member discount ×2 | –$ 40.00 |
| Sales tax (8.375%) | $ 23.28 |
| Gratuity | $ 50.00 |
| Total | $ 351.28 |
The table to the right shows how much we paid.
My friend goes to Chubby Group restaurants once in a while, so she signed up for a Chubby Club Plus membership at the restaurant using a promotional discount and got US$20 deducted from each of our meals. It seemed like it was a good deal if you go to Chubby Group restaurants at least a couple times a year, as the membership seems to pay for itself via member discounts fairly quickly. (Of course, you would have to keep track of and remember to cancel the membership after a year if you don’t want to renew at full price.)
I had a very fun time at The X Pot. They curate the experience such that they keep things interesting, whether it be through the logistics of the meal (like having a combination of hot pot and plated items, or preparing one of the dishes tableside), or through the wide variety of plates and methods of presentation of the food items being served. I also noticed that The X Pot doesn’t cut corners to try and save money and minimize costs—everything seemed to be executed thoughtfully, and all the components of the restaurant seemed classy.
Unsurprisingly, I think I would’ve probably just preferred a high-end all-you-can-eat Japanese or Korean BBQ experience instead of hot pot. However, I’m glad I got to try out The X Pot, because it definitely adds a unique twist to what you’d expect from other restaurants in its class.
If this pricepoint is within your budget and you like hot pot, then I think The X Pot is worth experiencing at least once. It might not be reasonable to go here as a regular, especially with all the other amazing and more affordable all-you-can-eat BBQ and hot pot restaurants in the Las Vegas Valley, but if you’re looking for more than just a barebones experience and want to have a good time treating yourself with some friends, then I think The X Pot would be a good candidate for that.