A restaurant requires a number of important elements to succeed, but two that help right away are a liquor license and a good name. Uovo, one of my very favorite new restaurants of the last couple of years, closed this month. It had a catchy name but, with no liquor license, didn’t turn enough profit to stay afloat.

Outlet Koca Lounge has an unlovely name, with echoes of factory rejects, and, worse, struggled through the summer with no alcohol. As this goes to press, a long-awaited beer-and-wine license is reportedly en route to the restaurant, and Outlet is readying to pour its beverage collection.

The “Koca” in the name refers to a Thai tradition of quick-poaching one’s own food at the table, along the lines of Mongolian hot-pot cooking or Japanese shabu shabu. Each table (except the ones on the attractive little back patio) has a smooth black induction cooking surface set into the middle, much snazzier and tidier than the usual propane- or charcoal-fired tables, from which you often come away smelling smokily of your meal.

The typical Asian hot pot at other restaurants is filled with simmering water or a mild broth, which gradually accrues flavor as the thin-sliced meats and vegetables that constitute the meal are cooked in it. These wan broths cook whatever goes in them, but never impart much flavor to it. Outlet gives a necessary dose of variety to hot-pot cuisine, with a selection of four seasoned broths — named Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter — that engage the cookables in an equal exchange of flavor. The broths flavor the meat; then, after all the meat is gone, diners can sip the broth, now deeply infused with the rich flavor of all that’s come before — what founding gastronomer Brillat-Savarin called osmazome: “the most meritorious ingredient of all good soups.”

Perhaps it’s the incipient chill in the air, but I found Winter the most satisfying, with its musky star anise tang in a savory beef stock that leaves its mark on anything dropped into it. Autumn, a coconut-milk-based curry concoction, has invigorating substance too, but Spring and Summer don’t quite pull their weight. Summer is a soy-milk broth that could politely be called “mild”; really it has almost no flavor at all, and at high heat the milk starts to curdle and float in unattractive grey blobs. Clear, lemongrass-scented Spring has a subtle tartness that pays off at the end, after round after round of simmered meat has clouded and flavored the broth; but until then, all it gives the food is a little sourness and spice.

A starter set, consisting of one broth plus a platter of items to cook — cress, corn, cauliflower, enoki mushrooms, dumplings, fish cakes, and fried tofu — costs $17. Other ingredients to cook in it are sold separately. The meats, sliced so thinly they roll into cylinders, include beef ribeye ($7), mild pork loin ($7), and, most distinctive tasting, leg of lamb ($9). Items like the cauliflower you’ll want to drop in the broth and leave for a few minutes till they soften; but the thin sheets of meat turn from rosy pink to savory pink-grey with just a few seconds’ dip. Dropping live clams, their shells tightly clenched, into the broth and watching them yawn invitingly moments later is a treat; so is the pinkening of sweet whole shrimp. These two, and pearly rings of calamari, come on a seafood platter for $11. More scintillatingly fresh seafood, the kind you’d be happy to eat raw, would be a delight in this kind of preparation; unfortunately the balance of Outlet’s seafood — calamari, scallops ($11), and sliced sea bass ($9) — has the faint odor of low turnover.

The non-hot-pot offerings are eclectic and surprisingly good, a reminder that cooking is sometimes best left to experts. Meaty main-course alternatives, for those who prefer that route, include a succulent version of Taiwanese classic three-cup chicken ($9) and a Thai salad ($15) filled with big slabs of seasoned steak that’s tasty but not particularly salad-like. Mussels steamed with Chinese sausage ($12) make a great starter, as do three small lamb chops ($12), juicy and easily picked up by their bones, with a coolly complex seasoning of cumin, yogurt, and tingly Sichuan pepper. Even the scallops are good, seared with lime and coconut ($12).

For dessert, a cup of mocha-flavored crushed ice ($4), augmented with ultra-smooth gelato from the brilliant nearby Laboratorio del Gelato, makes a fine finish after a hot broth.

Down at the less trafficked end of Orchard Street, with no intoxicants to offer, Outlet Koca Lounge has had a lot of empty seats. Over the summer, the restaurant has made the most of its enforced dryness, with offerings like a tall red watermelonade ($4), refreshing and thick with puréed fruit. The unleashing of a full roster of beer and sake will improve the outlook for this decent neighborhood spot.

Outlet Koca Lounge (76 Orchard St., between Broome and Grand streets, 212-477-9977).