FOOD

Nine Spices is easiest to understand as three unlimited meals overlapping in one room: hot pot, Korean barbecue and a ready-to-eat buffet component that includes sushi. If hot pot is new, the idea is simple. Pick a broth, bring raw ingredients from the buffet to the table, simmer them until cooked, then eat them with a dipping sauce. Korean barbecue follows the same self-serve pattern, but the raw meats and seafood go onto the tabletop grill. Choosing both lets the table move between simmering and searing.

The hot-pot side is where the ingredient bar is most impressive. Nine Spices offers nine broth choices, from gentle bases to spicy ones; Healthy Herbal is a lighter aromatic option, while Tom Yum brings a brighter sour-spicy profile. From there, the pot can be built almost like a personal soup: Chinese cabbage, watercress, enoki mushrooms, seafood mushrooms, tofu, dumplings and noodles all change the broth as they cook.

Thinly shaved beef is particularly suited to the format because it needs only a brief trip through bubbling broth. Shrimp and mussels add a seafood turn, and udon works best late in the meal, after vegetables and proteins have already flavored the pot. One of hot pot’s pleasures is that the broth evolves with every round, gradually becoming a concentrated record of everything cooked in it.

The grill has its own hierarchy. Spicy beef short rib and pork belly are two strong standouts. The short rib brings marinated richness that takes well to direct heat, while pork belly can be left long enough to render and crisp at the edges. The broader raw selection spans beef, chicken, pork and seafood, so the grill can be focused or exploratory.

Seafood gives Nine Spices an unusual Myrtle Beach edge. Crab legs are part of the conversation here in a way they are not at most hot-pot restaurants, and the buffet has also included shrimp, mussels, blue crab and more adventurous choices such as frog legs. It scratches some of the same abundance itch as the Grand Strand’s traditional seafood buffets, but with the guest controlling how much seafood is boiled, grilled or eaten cold.

Sushi and sashimi provide an important no-cooking counterpoint. They work at the beginning, while the broth heats and the grill comes to temperature, or between cooking rounds when everyone wants something immediate. It broadens the meal without another cooking project and makes Nine Spices feel larger than a standard hot-pot-and-BBQ concept.

Do not treat the sauce station as an afterthought. Sesame oil, chili oil, garlic, herbs, hoisin and other condiments can push the same piece of meat in different directions. A garlicky chili-sesame sauce makes thin beef bolder; a richer sesame-based mix softens the heat of a spicy broth. For first-timers, building one sauce cautiously and adjusting it after a few bites is easier than mixing everything at once.

The last surprise is the beverage side. Refrigerated cases hold familiar sodas alongside Asian teas, fruit drinks and other bottled or canned choices, with nonalcoholic selections included in the buffet experience. Bubble tea, smoothies and alcoholic drinks are separate extras. Together, the raw bars, nine broths, grill meats, seafood, sushi, sauces and self-serve drinks make Nine Spices feel less like a single cuisine than an interactive buffet system built around choice.