David’s Master Pot 大味麻辣烫 — Restaurant in Melbourne

3.5 stars ⭐️

A friend and I were lucky enough to be invited to David’s Spicy Pot for lunch one day. We were greeted warmly by their staff on arrival, and the traditional Chinese decor here was an awesome touch. The seating are more comfy than the other spicy pot places I have been to and the ingredients that’s available to choose from is about double the ones I have been to!

So first you grab a pot and a set of tongs, then you go through the variety of ingredients is the fridge and pick what you like. The fridge blow out lots of mists so at a point a can’t really see what is on offer but thankfully there are signs 🤣

After choosing, the waiter will weigh your food, and charge you accordingly. They will ask you what type of soup you want (pork bone soup, traditional malatang (numbing spicy soup), dry mix no soup, sour soup.

You can also get drinks and sides then as well.

We really enjoyed trying the small dish with variety of meat skewers in spicy sauce, I love that we get to try different parts of the animals, like cartilage, liver and stomach!

Our noodles came, and it came with this really yummy pickled veggies side dish and a small side of pork soup.

We tried the pork bone soup based noodles and the traditional hot pot malatang soup in a “spicy” level. The pork bone soup was slightly bland to be honest...and both soup seemed to be lacking in depth of flavour. If I was to compare David’s soup with the soup at Dragon Hot Pot I would prefer theirs more. Considering the soup is such an important part of the experience, I did dock off 0.5 points from my four star rating. But in terms of variety of ingredients I would choose David’s Spicy Pot.

We also tried two drinks: the new peanut and walnut soup which was fantastic, so warming and helped with the spiciness of the food. The red date and white snow fungus drink was delicious as well without bringing overly sweet.

Thank you once again for inviting us to...

Overall it was not the worst experience but I don't think I will come back. Two of us visited here 10ish at night, got a table.

When I was picking up food from shelves, a female staff asked if we can move our table to the bar as there were group of three people just came in and they have no TABLE. I understand it might be effective for three people have table and but we CAME IN first. If they had no table then couldn't they have had bar tables for them? I didn't like bar seats but I gave our table to that team as the staff said there are more tables upstairs. So we decided to dine upstairs. When we came to the cashier to weight our bowls, there were 5-6 of staffs were all mingling and chatting. Seems like there was shift change going on. But NOBODY CARED TO WEIGHT OR CHECK MY PURCHASE. I was standing there for about 3-5mins just watching they chatting away. NO MANAGERS around? Finally there was a one guy came and finished my purcahsing after the waiting. After paying, there was another male staff suddenly asked us where our sits are. We said we are sitting upstairs. And he goes " CAN YOU GUYS SEAT IN THE BAR on the ground floor?" ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING? What was the reason we moved to first floor? I said no. I realised why these guys wanted to sit us on ground floor. The first floor was a mess. They didn't clean the tables and area after previous customers left. They couldn't bother to clean upstairs for new customers. Thankfully there was two tables looks ok than others so we sat there. Finally food arrived but it was LUKE WARM hot pot. I never had luke warm hot pot in my life in hot pot place. How enjoyable it can be if your hot pot became LUKE WARM POT?

Compare to the Hotpot across the street I visit (even with a long que), this place is absolute joke in terms of all kind of essense what restaurant should have. NEVER...

This restaurant has been my fav regular spot for hotpot past a year however I’m stunned by the terrible attitude from Jandy who was working there today.

My drink finished when I walked in and I politely asked Jandy if there was a bin, she was totally in deniel looking at me pretending she didn’t understand Mandarin, I asked again in English but she said NO and walked away.

One hand with a big metal bowl, the other with tongs to collect the ingredients for my hotpot, what is a customer supposed to do? I left the empty cup on side and started collecting my food from fridge. When I came to the counter to pay, Jandy came out to grab the empty cup and threw it into the bin right behind her then gave me a lesson telling me they have a sign saying Do Not Litter! I absolutely DID NOT! I asked for a bin first and I was going to get it after I pay, I questioned about the big rubbish bin behind her she then said it’s not for customers! How ridiculous! She was unnecessarily mean!

It was embarrassing how she raised her voice arguing with me over the counter as well holding up the long line for ten minutes refusing to give me the manager or owners number, in the end I did receive a number who’s yet to be a manager but above her in her description, but I feel this attitude is not acceptable and really hurting the business, the owner should know about what just happened, please check your camera footage at 5:10pm April 19th. I don’t want this lady to bother me again next time I’m in please, please ask her to be friendly and helpful like the rest of your staff have...