Niu Lao Da — Restaurant in Kaohsiung

Read reviews saying how good this place is for fresh beef hotpot. We had hotpot with the regular beef coz they initially said the belly part were sold out.(reg beef is too lean while belly not marbled enough & both didn't deliver much beef taste) Later we ordered again and it became avail coz somebody reserved like 7 portion then cancelled their reservation. So we got to try both for the hotpot. Added mushroom, bean curd skin, vegetable, squid paste. The meat were fresh of course but I can hardly taste beef flavor much. Rest of the produce were all decent. We ordered stir fried beef tendon, fried beef with pickled cabbage, beef with bitter melon and all were decent. I like tendon most. Unfortunely, both hotpot and stir fried beef dishes were all just OK. I'm sorry to say, they don't taste bad but somehow just nothing extraordinary. Served by a senior lady who was cordial and polite though. 3 of us paid like NT$2,650 which is rather expensive. If only the food were amazing that would have been fine. Dipping sauce too were nothing exciting either. It didn't help enhance the flavor of hotpot cooked stuff much either. Maybe I prefer other more flavorful kind of dips. This is my personal opinion. I've dined all over the world so I'm able to compare rather comprehensively. Oh, well maybe...

Great place for beef shabu. Great value for the price. Ate by myself, ordered small hot pot base soup NTD100, the soup base is loaded with cabbage, pumpkin, daikon radish, fried tofu skin, tomato and frozen tofu. Then I ordered two plates of sliced beef. The first plate and second plate were different, the first had good marbling, while the second didn't, but both plates were equally delicious, tender and beefy. 3 to 5 seconds of dancing in the hot pot brings you to beef heaven. What makes the beef there special is that they were delivered on the same day the cow was butchered to the restaurant. Never frozen, hand sliced and sold on the same day only. If I had more companies, I would have ordered their other stir fried dishes using different parts of the cow. The waiters were really nice and helpful. The reason for only four star is because there was a rat running around, told the waiters about it, but not much...

I heard that this is a must eat restaurant in Kaohsiung so we went during our trip to Taiwan. The store was easy to find, both by bus and by subway. It's opposite Dali shopping center too. We went earlier in the evening so there wasn't a long line and we were lucky to be seated after 5 minutes despite not making a reservation. The soup base is amazing, so is the meat for the hotpot. The hot dishes were also great! Price wise, it's on the higher end especially given the portion of food but the overall experience was evened out by the taste so it's good overall. Would recommend this place to anyone...