Hotly Pot — Restaurant in Winnipeg

Update:

Came back today to Hotly Pot with some friends since I wanted my friends to try it. Such a Terrible experience compared to the first time I visited this place! The first time I visited, the ordering system was different, if I ordered one egg noodle, they will bring you one egg noodle, today they said “If you order one noodle they will bring you the amount of noodles based off the amount of people in your table” same with all the other dishes, they will count per head or fill up the plate. That doesn’t make sense since not every single person in the table has the same taste.

Also, more than half of the dishes that we ordered didn’t come. We reserved a table for 11:30 AM (RIGHT WHEN THEY OPEN) and they told us they were out of Supreme beef (like right when you open you are sold out already?) we were like ok, we will just order Angus beef, we ordered 5 angus beef, which should be 5 plates, and they only brought us 1, so we reordered another 5, and it never came, so I kept ordering the same dish for like another 3 times, and we ended up having to ask a server to check for the orders, and the server said you need to order from the iPad, I said I did, she said you need to reorder, I said order the same thing for like 4-5 times already! Then she said she was gonna check in the kitchen, and they brought us 1 beef again out of the 5 we ordered.

We accepted the fact that we just had to keep reordering the missing items, but the more expensive items on the menu just wouldn’t come until you ask a server (items like meatballs, fish balls they will come very fast, items like beef or seafood, it will never come until you ask a server), and it was very hard to get a server to come to your table, my broth was very low, like only 2 inches height left, so I could barely cook anything anymore, and no one would come to re-fill it for you until you can get a server’s attention.

On top of all the above, they keep bringing the wrong orders to our table. The last time that we checked for our Angus beef and pork order, they said “Sorry we are out of Beef and they only brought us the pork”, but then we saw that they were serving beef to the other tables… if you can’t afford to open an “ALL YOU CAN EAT” restaurant, just do regular menu, stop lying to your customers!

At the end of the day we need to pay for the same price per person even the whole menu is out of stock!

I hope this will be taken as a feedback for improvement, otherwise I can see this place’s review going lower and lower each time!

Old review:

Best hot pot ever in Winnipeg! Prices differ for lunch and dinner during weekdays, however there is a variety of food to pick from, so it is worth for the price IMO. The staff were very friendly and polite, especially the lady with pink hair 😄 there wasn’t a time limit like all the other all you can eat places, you could eat your meal peacefully without having to rush. There were few items that we ordered a couple of time and it never really came, but that’s ok, everything else we had was good enough. I’d recommend this place to my friends and would definitely be...

I visited with a party of 4 on a Saturday evening. Take everything here with a grain of salt. I suspect the experience would have been better at lunch. Thankfully I made a reservation, as the restaurant was packed. Bring hand sanitizer. You will want to use it, especially after visiting the buffet and touching the tablet.

Everything was a bit chaotic. It was noisy and difficult to hear the wait staff. At some point other customers could be heard having a speakerphone conversation, which appeared to be tolerated and not unusual for this restaurant?

Tablet ordering made things easy, but the tablet itself was sticky and it's cleanliness was questionable. They did not appear to be cleaned between customers. The tablet also somehow doubled some of the items we wanted, so when I reviewed the selection before submitting, I had to reduce some quantities back down to 1.

The food came very quickly after placing the order, leaving little time to enjoy the dim sum buffet or get sauce and drinks. Drinks included slush puppies which was fun. The dim sum was average. Some items were still a bit frozen due to the amount of traffic using the buffet. It was also extremely cramped and awkward in the dim sum/sauce/ice cream/drink area. Cups were in short supply, the sauce station was messy, cutlery was mismatched and not located conveniently.

The food for the hot pot was mostly good. DO NOT ORDER THE CORN OR THE LAMB. The broth was very bland, so be sure to make good use of the sauces. The spicy broths seemed to have a bit more flavor. The meat comes on very large plates, making it easy to order more than you will actually eat. You can always order more, so go light on the first pass. In spite of confirming my order carefully, we were served double the amount of meat we ordered, and another item was forgotten completely. The beef was tasty and don't pass on the special spicy beef. So good! The mushrooms were awesome. There was enough variety of noodles, meats and seafood. There were plenty of tofu and vegetarian choices, although there could have been more vegetables.

Save room for ice cream. It was really, really good.

Overall, my experience was sub par, but I would give it another shot before writing it off completely. It's definitely...

Writing this under the assumption that the restaurant is still ironing out the kinks in it's operations, but the service really leaves something to be desired.

First things first: they left off A LOT of the things we ordered (more than 5 items) and what they did bring out it wasn't the amount we ordered. Like we weren't sure if they were out of items or were just ignoring them. They also were really slow to clear tables, and slow with refills to broth, as a couple of pots at our table almost ran dry twice. Pretty sure someone's pot did start burning, as there was a definite burnt smell midway through our visit. I'd understand if they were getting slammed with customers, but it's not a good look when you have 3-4 servers just hanging out at the front of the restaurant chatting.

It's also a weird setup with the sauces and drinks, which are self serve. The bowls and glasses are underneath the counters, making it a bit of a pain to reach down to grab one. Also didn't help that they ran out of both bowls and glasses during our visit, and saw a bunch of people resort to reusing their bowls and glasses.

The food we did receive was fine, and the place is decorated nicely, which gives a nice ambiance to the place. Probably would've rated it 4 stars if they didn't start playing music at a slightly but noticeably louder level about an hour before they close. I've worked in the restaurant industry, and I know this is server code for "please leave", and it really just capped off a disappointing dinner out with my family.

I'll probably give it one more chance, just because I hate writing off places after one visit. I'll have to be really impressed the second time around though, but you never know. It'll probably be awhile for me to forget about this visit before I consider a...