Hot & Hot — Restaurant in Amsterdam

To be honest, I hate giving bad reviews so I almost never leave a review if I don't have a great experience.

Unfortunately I feel the need to leave one here though, due to the combination of the food quantity, quality, and price. Maybe coming from California has spoiled me for hot pot, but I left with the feeling that this was uncontestedly the worst hot pot I've ever had.

Quantity - portion sizes vary, but it's quite evident that they give you large quantities of cheap items (e.g. some vegetables, edamame), while quite small quantities of the more expensive items (e.g. meat).

Quality - the menus say "freshly sliced meat", which I find a little strange, since I'm not aware that any hot pot place fresh slices their own meat. It's obviously all frozen, but that's not necessarily an issue, as many hot pot restaurants freeze their meat and other items. The issues with quality become more evident once you eat the meat (no real issues with the vegetables) - you can tell that it's freezer burned/has been frozen for too long. No real flavor, and the texture is not what it should be (read as: a bit chewy and tough even though there is a decent mix of fat in the slices). Also, some things seem like they may have been stored with others that they shouldn't have been - our chicken meatballs had a strong mango flavor for some reason (assuming they were stored next to each other in the freezer/in the same bag). The rice was also quite dry - clearly sitting in the cooker on the warm setting for too long.

Price - the above things wouldn't honestly be so damning if the price was on the cheaper side. Unfortunately, it's not. For a relatively modest spread for two people we ended up spending almost €80. That is a price point at which I would expect either the quality or quantity (or both) to be much better.

One random thing that I just could not get past - I'm like 99% sure the chopsticks that they give you are cooking chopsticks? Even if they aren't, they are huge and make it super awkward to eat. I grew up using chopsticks with some regularity, but my hand was cramping by the end of the meal!

On the positive side - the people were nice, and the service was good. Based on the number of good reviews from a few years ago, I would guess that this business got hit hard by COVID and cut some costs to get by, which I can't fault. That being said, it's time to try and improve on something now to bring it back to...

AVOID, AVOID, AVOID!!! This is one of the worst restaurants we have ever eaten at. Do not go here unless you want to be ill in bed vomiting and with diarrhoea for the next few days. Myself and my mother entered the restaurant to which they told us that it was a hot pot that you need to cook yourself. The waiter and waitress were initially helpful to try to explain the complicated ordering and cooking process of the food. However, we were not asked if we were allergic to any foods upon entering the restaurant. We ordered a mild spice soup and mushroom soup with raw chicken, noodles, rice and vegetables. The soup was heated up for us, however it was not explained clearly that you had to wait for the soup to be boiling before cooking the chicken inside (we had to figure that out ourselves). When we tasted what was supposed to be the mild soup, it was ferociously hot with many many chillies inside. We could not finish the dish because it was incredibly spicy. The waitress told us that this was mild however we are sure that they were mistaken. Not only this but the chicken had a very off taste so we did not eat anymore. The only thing we could eat was the plain rice as it hadn’t been contaminated by the chicken or the ‘mild’ soup. When we paid the bill and left later that evening, my mother started to feel unwell and urgently needed the bathroom. Throughout that night her and myself were vomiting and had nasty diarrhoea, keeping us up all throughout the night. In the past two days, my symptoms have cleared up slightly however my mother is still in pain and has a constant urge to be sick. We suspect that this may be due to the poor hygiene of the food or the fact that she is allergic to shellfish, which may have been present in the soup (again no one asked us about allergies on arrival). Overall, this was a terrible experience and I would advise anyone thinking about going to this restaurant to AVOID...

Ate here with 3 friends, of which 2 are vegetarian. We didn’t mention this in our reservation, so they had to make some adjustments in the table arrangements, but they really tried their best to accommodate us. Super friendly, fun and very hospitable staff. The food is great! You should definitely get the dipping sauce. You can make it yourself, so you can pick any ingredient you like. The mushroom broth was our favorite. Be aware: spicy actually means spicy here (not Dutch level spicy, not even Indian level spicy, but 100% szechuan level spicy!) so don’t act all tough, by ordering the most spicy broth (🌶🌶🌶🌶). Trust me, you’ll thank me later. Try medium spicy (🌶🌶) first and come back if you think you can handle it more spicy than that. You will for sure like it enough to come...