Damiao Hotpot Melbourne 大妙火锅 · 川菜 — Restaurant in Melbourne

All You Can Eat Hot Pot with no time limit!! $43.90 per person for dinner - i think this is a pretty good deal! The restaurant itself is pretty compact, pretty tight seatings i must say. And the choice of plates are so random - you usually expect bowls at a hot pot place but we got these weird flat plates. Most things were self serve, which cuts the waiters and waitresses a lot of slack.

The soups were pretty basic, we got the 4 square. It came with a spicy chilli oil base, chicken soup, mushroom soup and tomato soup. All of which were pretty salty, i think they use a lot of MSG thought because we felt really thirsty after the meal.

There were 4 fridges total of food you could choose from, ranging from different meats like sliced marbled beef, fatty beef, lamb slices, chicken pieces to sausages, luncheon meat, pork kidney, duck blood, tripe and beef tendon balls. Not forgetting the wide array of seafood - basa fillets, shrimp mince, cooked prawns, mussels, squid & baby octopus. They also had stuff like fried crab cakes, lobster balls, crab sticks and fish roe balls.

They also had vegetables like bok choy, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower and a couple types of mushroom in a seperate fridge. A variety of noodles to choose from as well. What makes this place stand out is the hot food bar, although there wasn’t a huge variety of options, i think it was an awesome touch! They had dishes like fried pork knuckle, cold chicken feet salad (didn’t get to try unfortunately, bowl was empty), fried chicken, spring rolls, seaweed salad & some fried tari balls - which i really enjoyed!!

They had a sauce station with a range of different sauces and condiments, got to mix up a bunch of dipping sauces to try. Love this concept as it makes things super customisable! But unfortunately when we got there (7pm session) a lot of the condiment bowls were empty.

The service was average though, i think they are quite short staffed. A bunch of messy tables that haven’t been cleared and cleaned and a whole other bunch waiting to be served. I don’t blame the waiters but we did have to wait 10 minutes before someone came round to take our soup and drinks order.

Overall, i think it’s pretty worth, especially if you’re a big eater! There is no rush really without the time limit, so you can take your time with your food. I would recommend Damiao to family...

omg i cannot believe this place has 4.5stars rating, we did some serious intense workout by walking up the stairs as the restaurant is on the second floor. Weekend dinner for $50 here is an absolute joke. Your typical everyday hotpot, really limited soup base selections, I'd rather go to Haidilao chinese hotpot at least their staffs dance for a 1% tip. Food was bad below standard quality, all the ingredients in trays piled up in the fridge section, that means you can't just get a slice of beef for tasting. So much unnecessary fat on the side, the trays looked dirty, the lunchable meat spam was disgusting. The best tasting food are the fried dumplings, of course non of the hotpot ingredients. They have ice cream left on the freezer, visually does not look appetizing at all, ultimately kinda disgusting, the scoops were left in room temperature water probably filled with bacteria at this point like they never clean it. The icecream looked like they were sitting there for 2 months. NOT a lot of variety for a hotpot place like I expected a lot more considering that we paid $50 PER PERSON, this was def NOT worth the price. I didn't even try to get my moneys worth as the quality of the food were so bad I just went ahead and got froyo for $14 instead that was worth so much more than eating unsanitary 3 months old frozen solid ice cream. We called the waiter serval times to fill up our soup base and after 10 minutes all our soup were soaked up by the food and no liquid were left, like come on $50 for this kind of service we're not stir frying ramen with msg we were having hotpot. Once a lot of people arrived the place was crowded like I couldn't even walk comfortably with a plate with me. Water and cutleries were all self-serve, not much service provided. All those tiktok reviewers were overrating this place because the restaurant prob offered them a discounted or free meal for the dishonest review. Definitely not recommend coming here, if you like hotpot just go to HaiDiLao you won't be spending $50pp. That's all for today with another...

Ambiance: located above metro Woolworths this place is really nice. The atmosphere is sophisticated yet warm and everything is really comfortable physically and visually. The views are really nice.

Service: the service here was so sweet! Best service I've experienced in a while. The staff are very attentive and helpful one of the older staff saw our group standing outside and held the door open for us 🥹 Very polite and topped up our soup broths frequently, good manners. There was a thing where we had to leave after 1.3 hours for the buffet but they just ended up letting us stay for however long we wanted, it was $38 per person for lunch.

Food: THE FOOD HERE IS AMAZING! Literally you can eat EVERYTHING the fatty beef, prawns, fish tofu, enoki mushrooms is what I recommend. The spicy soup and mushroom soup half and half is a good combo. They have ice cream too and fried foods like potato tornado and fried spring rolls. Also the black sesame ice cream with the fatty beef cooked in the spicy broth is a decent combo ngl.

This place is honestly worth coming all the way from regional Victoria for so DEFINITELY...