Big Bowl Malatang — Restaurant in Shellharbour City Centre

An interesting idea, add your own ingredients and create your own soup. However, you can only weigh your bowl at the end so have no idea how much you are adding and how expensive it will be as they charge by weight for all of the ingredients

The staff members offered no help or interaction other than dumping frozen crab claws and other frozen seafood into the tray after taking them out of a commercial bag.

The meats on offer are mostly fat and unpleasant. The vegetables were nice and fresh though which lent an enjoyable crunch to the soup.

Staff were very quick preparing the soup however that is where the positive parts end.

We got a chicken base clear soup with bok choy, onion a few varieties of mushrooms, baby corn, flat noodles and mushroom dumplings as my wife is vegetarian.

It was quite possibly the most bland soup I have ever tasted, there was no flavour profile, no flavours had been added or infused. It tasted like they had gotten beef stock from woolies and mixed half and half with water and boiled it with veggies. I added chilli oil, chilli paste, fish sauce and soy sauce to make it palatable. Also the mushroom dumplings were actually a seafood ball with mushroom in the middle, luckily I tried that before my vegetarian wife ate one.

Could be very unfortunate if someone has a seafood allergy.

As a big fat dude who loves food, I left half of the bowl on the table, that in itself is...

Came here on my birthday and to say the least was very disappointed!!! It was my first time experience with Big bowl Malatang, and didn't know the process of picking your own ingredients to then be made into soup. The staff were very unfriendly towards me and was annoyed when I asked for help even though they weren't that busy. The ingredients on display were not that good quality but I wanted to give them a chance. I kept referring to the Staff waitress that I wanted my soup to be Pho Soup with a clear broth. The soup they made me was not. It was cloudy coloured, very bland and tasteless. Very overpriced too. I had to keep asking for serviettes as they kept these behind counter, and she only gave me one. I had to go looking for clean spoon as some of them were not that clean. And noticed some tables were not wiped down too, even though they weren't that busy. Poor service and lack of attention to detail, and lack of topping up condiments. One of the customers complained to the staff about her soup and staff was very rude to her and very unfriendly, and unprofessional about it. I overheard another customer on the table next to me saying her soup tasted disgusting, so I wasn't the only one thinking the same. To say the least, I'm very disappointed, especially it was my birthday lunch. I'm never coming back!! Never!! Don't waste your time and money here, so many other great restaurants to...

First of all, this place is over priced. I went to the one in Sydney and it is not as overpriced as this one. But yeah we were willing to pay and try. The ingredients was almost empty and not fresh at all. But we paid for a high quality food so we aim higher. The condiments section was empty!!!!! Kindly asked the lady, and she said that she was willing to top up some garlic for us. Because their was nothing in there! Like nothing! We waited for her to prepare and then the guy told us that the garlic was sold out! We were waiting! They dont want to top it up because they are closed tomorrow. Great! No hospitality at all with this kind of price! My friend asked for chili! And their was only the oil left without any chili! And again she refused to top it up! Until I said to her, how can i enjoy my malatang if the condiments its not there?

Why is it so hard for these people to give hospitality to your customers. We were asking for a lil bit of garlic and chili. Not even a ton. If you can give them, you can make your customers happy and maybe you will get a repeated customers. But with the experience we had, with the price that doesn’t match at all! We will never going to come back...