Mandarin Grill & Hotpot — Restaurant in Budapest

I’m a big fan of hotpot, in Budapest i have tried many eg : Samurai, Aranytal, Mimoza, Luxi beef … all of my experiences there were good but here was a disater, unexpected terrible 😐

The atmosphere was one of the reasons that made me want to run out of here. The outside is covered with huge smoke from 2 sides of the restaurant , one is from outside on the sidewalk and the other is from the kitchen inside. I know this is how their business works but they had to find a reasonable solution to make the customer experience perfect, we left with the clothes smelled of smoke.

The food: we ordered few sticks of grilled which was not bad. But about the hotpot, there were only 2 options to order which was MUSHROOM broth and SPICY broth, then we decided to order 2 of them to try. Their broth doesn't have any seasoning at all.the pot of spicy water they put in a big bar of red condiment which i saw they took out from the fridge next to the drinks fridge. Full of oils in the pot with SPICY ingredients and water no salt, no sugar 😬 And the mushroom broth was nothing except WATER AND MUSHROOM 😀?? After that they poured a kind of water from a kettle and mix everything up. I dont even understand why did they feed everyone this “instant food” at all?

The toppings were some kinds of frozen products as many chinese restaurant that i know. There were raw meet like beef, pork, lamb, squid, octopus which wasnt fresh. We put it the pot to cook around 15mins and it tasted rotten and we got diarrhea after the meal.

Never never never...

The restaurant is located in a former factory or warehouse. It has a very quaint and rustic interior, which I really liked. Rustic partitions, rustic heavy wooden tables, and very hard wooden benches.

It was very chaotic; we had reserved a large table and didn't know for a long time what to do next. Later, we found out that we had to get our own drinks from a large refrigerator. To this day, we still don't understand how the drinks were billed.

My impression is that the restaurant is very traditional Chinese in terms of how it operates, and the service and food are very traditional Chinese. An inexperienced European would have problems with this when the service is so chaotic and unhelpful.

We then ordered hot pot, but without any help from the waiters, none of us really knew what to do. So we just improvised so that we could eat something. For us Western Europeans, the dining and taste experience was not really good. Perhaps it was due to our inexperience or the quality of the restaurant. I actually love Far Eastern and Chinese food, but this was very tasteless. Unfortunately, I cannot give a better rating.

With the right help and guidance from the staff, it could be a great...

When we arrived, we had a good impression of the restaurant but then we quickly realized that it was just a smoke screen (Pun intended 😉). Yes, the restaurant is smelling like smoke and it might be a game changer for sensitive people.

Regarding the service, well it is non-existent, we had to figure out how the service works, we had to run after the waiter and the menu was confusing (Miscommunication on what you can choose between BBQ and hotpot).

The icing on the cake, we discovered on our way out that the cook was smoking a cigarette in the kitchen.

I recommend to...