新千葉火鍋-西門町店 — Restaurant in Wanhua District

This might possibly have been my worst meal at a restaurant in Taiwan. I’m left quite speechless.

Please forgive me if I seem harsh, but this is my honest feedback from my experience.

I arrived on 6/22 at 7:10 PM with two adults and two kids. An emotionless server took us to our dirty table and said nothing, just stood there waiting for us to choose from the price-leveled meals. There were no descriptions, and we had no idea what each price level included or how much of the buffet we could access.

This might have been one of the most underwhelming eating experiences I’ve had in Taiwan, so I’ll break down my review into ambience, service, and food.

Ambience 🚨 Incredibly dirty and unhygienic. Our table was not even close to being clean, covered with oil from previous guests, and the floor was scattered with leftover food crumbs.

The buffet areas were messy and dirty, with serving utensils constantly cross-contaminating vegetables and raw meats, posing a real food safety issue.

The self-service utensils were encrusted with leftover food particles and hadn’t been properly cleaned. The black melamine plates and bowls were often chipped and oily.

Black plastic trolleys used to clean up dirty plates were parked everywhere, with dirty plates and cups in view everywhere you looked.

The bathroom was on another level of dirty. The men’s room had feces on the wall and smeared on the toilet seat. There was water all over the floor, no toilet paper, and a lingering smell of urine. My wife took our son to the ladies room and she was horrified at the condition in that state. It was probably one of the worst toilets I’ve ever seen! How can there be feces smeared on the toilet seat and wall? How often does the team check?

The overall feel of the restaurant made me feel like I was in mainland China. There were about 150 people dining, and everyone was grabbing food like barbarians, as if king crab legs had just been brought out at a buffet table. Horrendous. The sight of the untrained service team and their attitudes made it even worse.

Service 🚨 What service? Nonexistent. There is no service. Everyone worked with an unhappy attitude, as if they were all pissed off to be at work. Stoic. Emotionless. The only somewhat memorable person was the cashier (an older chubby lady and a pregnant lady with a baby daughter), but the rest of the team was poorly trained in hospitality and customer relations. It’s quite sad that a restaurant group cannot implement basic service skills for their staff.

When they dropped off food at our table, the service team literally just dropped it off and walked away. Worse service than you’d get from the aunties at any Hong Kong tea restaurant.

Food 🚨 The hot pot was super basic, just the same as you would find anywhere else, with boring soup bases.

The hotpot foods were all you can eat and lined up in a tall open fridge for self-serve style. It was super unhygienic, with everyone’s sneezes and germs potentially all over the food. Cross-contamination of proteins was a big issue. Many of the hot buffet foods weren’t even up to temperature, and many looked like they had been there for a long time. Pretty much the buffet foods looked extremely cheap and just there to make the overall value seem higher.

The best things in this meal were the fried chicken wings (they are huge, juicy, and crispy) and the soft-serve vanilla ice cream cone. That’s it.

Dear management, you need to seriously consider training your staff more and improving the health and cleanliness of your establishment. It’s scary, to be honest, and after this first experience, I will never go back. Even if it were a free meal, I’d rather buy a bento box from 7/11 than endure the bad service, unhygienic ambiance, and basic food from...

full disclosure: i am writing this review because they’re having a promotion where you get a free ice cream bar for writing a review with a photo.

first time at this location but i’ve been to other locations of the same store. this one had the option to upgrade to other types of meat which was really great especially with the C option which gets you unlimited wagyu. the staff was also super friendly. the unlimited option of the meats makes this worth the price. unlike other locations, this one doesn’t have the freshly sliced meat as part of the basic option so if you want to eat meat i would recommend at least getting the B option. without upgrading you’re going to have to wait for them to restock the meat especially beef and pork cause they get taken really quickly.

also i didn’t drink but upgrading to B or C gets you unlimited beer so if you’re drinking it would be worth it for...

The first best thing about this place is everyone gets their individual pots. That is something I consider very good. The second is the price, i think we got more than sufficient in the amount we paid. Then is the taste of the soup, I think really good. I had spicy soup, and they give options for spicy level (very, medium, less). We went as family, and everyone got different soups, and everyone pretty much liked their's. There is one option of all we can have, there are so many vegetables, noodles, meat, salad, sauces, etc to choose. So many dessert options like, fruits, cakes, chocolate, icecream (cup, cone, bars) and more. This place is also good for children as they have cookies, chocolate, fruit juice, wafer rolls, etc. I would recommend this place for a good hotpot experience. P.S. I really hope people try not...