Maybe it’s your thing and maybe it’s not, but judging from the wait during 901 Hot Pot & Korean BBQ’s first week open, Memphians are all about cooking their own food.

901 Hot Pot officially opened Monday, March 20, on Germantown Parkway at U.S. Highway 64, and it’s a happening place.

And why not? It’s communal, a fun way to visit with friends, eat and have a little extra thrown in — the cooking part, which most of us who like to eat like to do. In any event, this doesn’t require top-level culinary skills, but you do need to know what you’re doing because you’re going to be lost unless you’ve ever been to a hot pot restaurant before.

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I don’t mean eaten a hot pot at a restaurant, by the way, because this is a whole different experience.

There are actually two experiences going on, because there’s also a grill in the middle of your table. The first thing to know is that the whole table gets the same service. You can do hot pots or barbecue or hot pots and barbecue, but everyone does the same thing.

Next, it’s all you can eat, though you are warned by a flyer tacked to the wall by your table that if you’re wasting food, you can be charged extra by the pound. Don’t get your back up about this, because you’re going to do it right and you won’t have to worry about it. You can always order more, so start modestly and even so, you’ll likely order too much.

It’s $19.99 for adults at lunch and $29.99 at dinner for either hot pot or barbecue, but you can get both for an extra $5; go ahead and splurge.

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A large laminated menu lets you look at what you’re ordering, and there are more than 100 choices ranging from prime beef brisket, tongue, short ribs, belly and more to pork, chicken, seafood, sausages, dumplings, vegetables, rice, noodles and more.

Then there’s a cold bar, where you’ll find dozens of sauces and condiments for whatever you decide to create when you put the meat in the pot or on the grill.

For the hot pot, first you pick your soup base from eight choices that range from herb to Thai tom yum to miso; I went with the tom yum, which had some heat, but was totally manageable and a few notches down, I was told, from the Szechuan spicy.

When it comes to you, the server will place it on the induction burner in front of you — everyone gets their own — and turn it on, but you need to be watching so you can turn it off if it gets too hot. And don’t worry; the induction heat will quickly warm it up should it cool too much.

Then you pick your food, and each diner gets their own though everything comes out on platters, so pay attention if you’re not sharing. I started with beef brisket, pork belly, chicken and scallops, picked shumai from the dumplings, bok choy, onions and several mushrooms from the vegetables plus fried tofu.

But it didn’t matter, because my dining partners picked some of that plus squid, shrimp, pot stickers, bulgogi chicken, meat balls and more. When the impressive collection of platters was delivered to us, we took inventory and then headed for the cold bar and those sauces.

I can’t even tell you where to start here, because you know what you like. Do you want spicy? Creamy? Sweet? You’re in luck.

There are about two dozen sauces, from the familiar hoisin and oyster sauce to creamy yum-yum to spicy Korean hot sauce to a collection of peppers, seeds and herbs for finishing your food and a smaller section of cold items such as edamame, kim chi and pickled daikon (which I loved and ate with just about everything).

I tried half a dozen sauces and found that I kept returning to the Thai ginger, which had a reasonable kick to it but also was a bit sweet and full of flavor.

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Back at the table, we started by adding select items to our hot pots. I built mine with a quail egg (ordered by someone else, but we were all sharing), shumai, fried tofu, a big shrimp (which we mostly used on the grill because they were large and plump), beef brisket, bok choy, some mushrooms and a few rings of onion for flavor.

On the grill, we had octopus, several cuts of beef, pork belly and our favorite, the chicken bulgogi, cooking with mushrooms and onion.

This all happens fast. There’s a chart on the wall that gives you an idea of how long the food should stay on the grill, and it starts at 20 seconds per side because most of the meat is thinly sliced.

In the hot pot, you can take a look. Again, the meat will cook fast, but how fast depends on how hot you’re running your pot. I brought mine to a full boil then turned it off for a bit before I cooked anything because a poaching situation made more sense to me than boiling.

Don’t add too much to the pot, because after you eat what’s in there, you can add more. Same with the grill — keep it going but keep eating a bite here and there instead of letting anything burn.

Do I want to cook my own food at every meal? Of course not, no more than I want to eat fried chicken for lunch every day or enchiladas for dinner every night.

But, yes, it was a fun experience; the food was good quality; and you can go many times and not eat the same thing. In fact, you’ll have to go many times if you want to make it through the menu.

901 Hot Pot & Korean BBQ, 2965 Germantown Parkway, is open noon-4 p.m. for lunch, Mondays through Fridays, and the price is $19.99 for adults and $7.99 for children 4-6 years and $11.99 for kids 7-10. Dinner is 4-10:30 p.m., Mondays through Thursdays; 4-11:30 p.m. on Fridays; noon-11:30 p.m., Saturdays; and noon-10:30 p.m. Sundays, when the cost is $29.99 for adults and $11.99 for kids ages 4-6 and $15.99 for kids ages 7-10. Call 901-512-4963 for more info.